Daily Shmutz | COMMENTARY / OPINION | 10/16/25

COMMENTARY / OPINION

Israeli MK EXPOSES Bad Gaza “Peace” Deal As a Victory for Hamas [33:38] Yishai Fleisher

Oct 16, 2025

Amit HaLevy (MK on the Foreign Affairs and

Defense Committee) unpacks the Gaza deal to expose potential disaster.

MK Amit Halevi is also currently a member of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

On Israel, Trump Is Right and His Critics Are Wrong [VIDEO 6:31] By Joan Swirsky

October 16, 2025 American Thinker

Some of the most astute writers and commentators who have weighed in on the Israel-Hamas ceasefire/hostage release/end of war issue that is on every media outlet’s front burner today and for the last few weeks is dead wrong about what they say is the foolish, dangerous, misguided, cave-to-the-terrorists, endanger Israel, empower-our-enemies choice that President Donald Trump and his negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have made in this delicate process.

“What is it about cutting off the head of the snake Trump doesn’t understand?” rails one critic who questions why Hamas has not yet been obliterated.

“What right does Trump have to repeatedly warn Israel against sovereignty decisions over at least a significant portion of 4,000-year-old ancestral Jewish lands in Judea and Samaria?” says another critic who admits he voted twice for President Trump.

And here is what the Green Prince — son of one of the founders of Hamas — tells Chris Cuomo at CNN he thinks about this bad “deal”:

Dozens — nay, hundreds — of other headlines echo everything from disapproval to horror to disgust and contempt.

Even P.M. Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, of all people, weighed in, saying that “for forty years already, I’ve fought against the moral abomination of releasing terrorists.”

Convenient Amnesia

Interestingly, those critics choose to forget that in his former life as a billionaire builder, then-Mr. Trump dealt routinely with the mob — the Mafia — the organization that essentially controlled all building in New York, and the unions (of plumbers, electricians, et al.), as well as countless politicians, judges, again et al.

As everyone knows, the penalty for crossing the mob…let’s leave it at that.

The point is that dealing with tough and cutthroat characters was nothing new to Mr. Trump.

But granted, the mob appeared to be small potatoes during President Trump’s first term, as he encountered the treachery of the Democrat party’s vicious daily — actually, hourly — assaults via the phony Russian hoax, the phony impeachments, the phony January 6 “insurrection,” the phony lawfare attacks, on and on and on.

But he survived and, after the rigged election of 2020, went on to thunderously win his second term in the White House — in spite of two assassination attempts. He is now keenly aware of the subversive, indeed treasonous, Democrats who are now, thanks to their regressive policies and alienating representatives, polling at the bottom of the fetid barrel, right along with the longtime cesspool in New York City, commonly known as the United Nations.

But what about the Israel deal?

Critics of this deal often cite the outrage of President Trump dealing with the likes of Qatar, the very funders and arch-believers in Hamas — and Hezb’allah and the Houthis, et al. — and all of the goals inscribed in their mission statements…to annihilate all Jews on earth and to occupy, actually own, every square inch of Israel.

How could he even speak to these terrorist-supporters?
Doesn’t he know that they always lie, that there is even an Islamic word, taqiyya, that in essence permits and even approves of both lying and deception?
Can’t he appreciate that they are laughing behind his back?
Doesn’t he appreciate that the minute they agree to anything, or sign any document, they will renege and violate every word?

In fact, knowing all of these things is precisely the president’s genius!

Real Insight

It reminds me of something I learned when I was studying to become a psychotherapist decades ago. One of the theorists we studied was Erik Erikson (1902–1994), a German-American child psychoanalyst who coined the phrase “identity crisis” and was ranked as the 12th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

The incident took place when Dr. Erikson went to visit one of his patients in a mental hospital. Upon seeing the doctor, the patient greeted him warmly and then reminded him: “Dr. Erikson, you do remember that I am Jesus Christ!”

And what was Dr. Erikson’s response? Did he remind the patient that he was delusional? Did he correct the patient’s statement by telling him his actual name? Did he recommend that the patient should see him more often?

None of the above. He simply said, “Oh, I understand that your father was a carpenter.”

What was Dr. Erikson doing? Instead of being a didactic therapist, citing all the things he had learned in his medical residency about the human psyche, he entered into his patient’s world. In fact, he affirmed this delusion by de facto not only agreeing that he was speaking with Jesus Christ, but by affirming that he knew something factual about his background.

By doing so, he also affirmed his patient’s trust.

Sound Familiar?

If you’re speaking with someone who believes fervently in terrorism, who donates massive amounts of money to keep terrorist networks alive and in savage action, do you scold him, chastise him, lecture him, judge him…or do you enter into their warped worlds, finding words that convince them that you’re not going to talk about murder and rape and sadism on an unspeakable level, but rather the huge and enticing benefits of calling it a day, and also the huge and draconian consequences if you don’t?

Mystery Solved

How did President Trump get terror-infatuated Qatar and all the surrounding anti-Israel Arab states, and most if not all of the European anti-Israel countries, to embrace the unprecedented ceasefire and hostage release that took place before the eyes of the entire world on October 13, 2025?

Simply, he entered their world. He told them he understands their concerns. He never contradicted their blatant racism. He never challenged their 7th-century mentality. He only told them that what lay in their futures was eminently more attractive — and more profitable — than their current path.

And to be sure, he also told them that if they crossed him, they would be crossing the United States of America, and that, in his book, would require him to level consequences they never wanted to think about.

Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author. Her website is www.joanswirsky.com, and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.

[Ed.: Okay Joan, I stand corrected.]

Ukraine’s strategy against Russia: ESCALATE and PROVOKE [VIDEO 19:26] LEO HOHMANN

Sending US Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for use against Russia would be ‘two steps up the escalation ladder’, a risky move likely to achieve Zelensky’s desired plan of provoking a Russian response.

OCT 16, 2025

President Trump announced plans today for another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time in Budapest, Hungary.

The meeting will take place at a date to be determined after “high-level advisors” from the two countries meet next week, he said in a Truth Social post on Thursday.

Trump expressed hope, after a phone call with Putin, that by meeting face-to-face the two leaders will be able to bring the bloody Russia-Ukraine war to an end.

Thursday’s 84-minute phone call “was a very productive one,” he said, adding: “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.”

The last summit between the two presidents took place in Anchorage, Alaska, in August. While both called that meeting productive, nothing of substance was ever achieved. In fact, relations between the two superpowers have deteriorated greatly since that August summit in Alaska.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday praised the Trump administration’s diplomatic outreach and noted that it is the sole Western government that has made any effort to understand the fundamental causes of the Ukraine conflict.

However, Lavrov said Moscow is still waiting for Washington’s response to the roadmap presented by Putin at the Alaska summit.

Thursday’s phone conversation came amid the backdrop of Trump threatening to send U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for use against Russia. These threats by the Trump administration have played out in media interviews and over social media for the last two weeks. This is a strange way to conduct foreign policy, but that’s the Trump style. Everything is geared for maximum theatrics.

This penchant for the theatrical was on display during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One on Monday following a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump said Ukraine needs Patriot missiles “very badly” and would like to also receive the more offensive and deadly Tomahawk missiles.

“They’d like to have Tomahawks. We talked about that, and so we’ll see. I don’t know, I might have to speak to Russia, to be honest with you, about Tomahawks,” Trump said. “Do they want to have the Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so.”

“I might speak to Russia about that, in all fairness. I told that to President Zelensky, because Tomahawks are a new step of aggression,” Trump added. “I might say, ‘Look, if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks.’ I may say that.”

Trump described the Tomahawk missile as an “incredible” and “very offensive” weapon.

Putin reportedly told Trump during the phone call Thursday that Tomahawks won’t change the battlefield situation, but will harm U.S.-Russia relations.

Retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis noted, in an interview today with former British diplomat Ian Proud, that Ukraine’s progress in the war has been stopped cold over the last three or four months, while Russia continues its slow advance. Ukraine seems to have a two-pronged strategy — escalate and provoke. Each new escalation leads to a provocation that is designed to expand the war and draw NATO into direct conflict with Russia.

If Zelensky gets his way and Trump delivers the Tomahawks, this would represent “two steps up the escalation ladder,” Proud told Col. Davis.

So there you have it. Escalate and provoke. That’s Zelensky’s strategy. And right now it looks like at least a 50-50 chance that Trump will allow Zelensky to continue this game of escalating and provoking, with the intention of setting a trap for Putin, hoping to bait the Russian leader into an attack on NATO forces in Poland or Romania or perhaps the Baltics. Then it’s game on for World War III.

My question is this: Is it really Ukraine’s strategy, to escalate and provoke Russia, or is this the NATO strategy, using Ukraine as its pawn?

I would lean toward the latter. I don’t think the US or NATO cares one bit about Ukraine and will use that country until its last man is left standing if it means continuing this war against Russia. The ultimate goal of this war has never changed. From the beginning, the goal has been regime change and getting control of Russia’s wealth of resources.

NOTE: If you appreciate these updates, please consider upgrading from a free to a paid subscription. This substack is how I make my living, working hard to provide independent news and analysis especially as it relates to war and peace and the growing technocratic surveillance system.

Hamas Executes Gazans While the World Negotiates With Terror [59:10] AYNAZ ANNI CYRUS

OCT 16, 2025 – A recording from Aynaz Anni Cyrus’s live video

The End of Britain, France, and Germany JOHN LEAKE

On the suicidal tendencies of the great nations of Europe.

OCT 16, 2025

Yesterday I saw in report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

The report resonated with me, as I had, just the day before, had a long telephone conversation with former British MP, Andrew Bridgen, about the current state of affairs in England. He perceives them to be very grim.

In the summer of 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I found myself visiting Leipzig, Germany, where I wandered into a book store near the St. Thomas Church, where J.S. Bach had served as the music director from 1723 to 1750. The store was stocked with books by authors all trying to answer the question: Why did the great nations of Europe essentially commit suicide in 1914-18?

The answer, it seems to me, is the marked tendency of any society’s political class to be captured by interests and ideologies that have little to do with the interests of the people they govern. Apart from bankers and arms manufacturers, the Great War of 1914-18 served no one who lived in the warring countries. On the contrary, it sent millions of their young men—including their most educated young men—to be machine gunned and gassed in the trenches.

While some elements of the state are necessary for providing basic security, maintaining critical infrastructure, and adjudicating conflict, the state invariably becomes way too big and parasitic, and ultimately cancerous.

I fear that Britain, France, and Germany are currently suffering from Stage 4 Cancer that originated in the bosom of their bizarre governments run by total weirdos who in no way represent the interests of the people they govern.

When Yitzhak Rabin blinked against Hamas MOSHE PHILLIPS

The failure to decapitate the leadership of Hamas when the opportunity presented itself is one of modern Israel’s most devastating missed chances.
Oct. 16, 2025 JNS

Hamas was founded in the late 1980s, and by 1992, during Yitzhak Rabin’s time as Israel’s prime minister, it had already become a major Islamic terrorist organization. It had shown a clear penchant for violence, including murder and kidnapping. Rabin initially took decisive steps to consign Hamas to the dustbin of history.

Then, tragically, he blinked. Under pressure from Peace Now, the United Nations, Europe and the White House, Rabin reversed course.

It is instructive—and deeply sobering—to recall exactly what happened.

On Dec. 13, 1992, Nissim Toledano, an Israeli border police officer, was kidnapped by Hamas in the central Israeli city of Lod—not in Gaza but in the heart of Israel. Two days later, his body was found. Hamas had sought to exchange Toledano for Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who at the time was serving a life sentence for ordering the murder of Palestinian collaborators.

The Israeli government responded swiftly and decisively. Rabin’s administration arrested more than 1,000 in relation to the incident, and deported more than 400 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists to Lebanon. These terrorists were sent to a Southern Lebanon no-man’s land between Israeli Defense Forces checkpoints and Lebanese army checkpoints. The expulsions should have been regarded as correct by world leaders. If Rabin’s critics inside Israel and outside of it had the foresight to see Hamas for exactly what it was, so much future carnage would not have happened. The trajectory of Israeli history would have been changed.

Instead, the backlash came quickly and forcefully.

The condemnations were immediate and widespread. The Bush administration—President George H. W. Bush’s—criticized the expulsions. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater urged nations to “avoid reactions such as deportations that risk complicating the search for peace.” The statement ignored the context: a murdered Israeli police officer and a terror network responsible for a growing list of atrocities are not morally equivalent. Hamas has never wanted true peace.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called on Israel to “rescind the expulsion order.” Within days, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 799, which condemned Israel’s actions and demanded the immediate return of the deportees. Amnesty International chimed in, saying it was “seriously concerned” by the deportation. The European Economic Community issued a call for the Israeli government to allow the deportees to return at once.

Egypt also weighed in. Amr Moussa, then Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, insisted that “the deportees must be allowed to return, whether they belong to Hamas or Fatah or any other faction,” and incorrectly argued that Israel did not have “the right to deport them collectively.” Israel had every right.

Among those deported was none other than Ismail Haniyeh, who would later become a senior Hamas leader and the mastermind behind countless acts of terrorism. His permanent expulsion could have marked the end of his influence. Instead, it became a temporary inconvenience.

Faced with this wave of international pressure, Rabin surrendered. Within months, the deportees’ terms of expulsion were reduced from two years to just one year. The majority returned—many to Gaza, and others to Judea and Samaria. And Hamas, far from being on its way out, reconstituted itself with renewed energy.

If only Rabin had not blinked. If only he had maintained his resolve and followed through with the permanent expulsions that were very much warranted, perhaps Israel could have been spared decades of escalating conflict, suicide bombings, rocket attacks and a terrorist invasion. The failure to decapitate the leadership of Hamas when the opportunity clearly presented itself is one of modern Israel’s most devastating missed chances.

Thirty-three years ago, a prime minister—though he had initially made the right choice—ultimately succumbed to both domestic and international pressure. The result was not peace. The result was tragedy, and it set the stage for an unceasing war of terror against Israel.

Rabin’s decision gave Hamas a second life, and Israelis have been paying the price ever since.

MOSHE PHILLIPS Moshe Phillips, a veteran pro-Israel activist and author, is the national chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI). A former board member of the American Zionist Movement, he previously served as national director of the U.S. division of Herut and worked with CAMERA in Philadelphia. He was also a delegate to the 2020 World Zionist Congress and served as editor of The Challenger, the publication of the Tagar Zionist Youth Movement. His op-eds and letters have been widely published in the United States and Israel.

Europe is losing its religion, and its Jews. by Yaniv Weissman

As cathedrals turn into nightclubs and faith gives way to nihilism, Europe’s moral collapse is driving out the very people who once embodied its conscience.

OCT 15, 2025 The Future of Jewish

Europe, largely godless in its majority, is transforming its ancient churches into dance clubs and entertainment centers.

“There’s no going back” was the headline of a fascinating article from Fortune magazine describing the trend across Europe, especially in its western part, which nurtured Christianity for most of 2,000 years. Churches, monasteries, and chapels stand empty and neglected more and more as faith and church attendance have diminished over the past half-century.

“It hurts. I won’t hide that. On the other hand, there’s no going back,” said Monsignor Johan Bonny, the Bishop of Antwerp, to the Associated Press news agency.

Something must be done, and now, more and more buildings that were once sacred are being repurposed for everything from clothing stores and climbing walls to nightclubs. This is a phenomenon seen throughout much of Christian Europe’s heartland, from Germany to Italy, and many nations in between. It’s particularly prominent in Flanders, northern Belgium, which houses some of the continent’s largest cathedrals and finest art. If only it had enough believers.

A 2018 study by the Pew Research Group showed that in Belgium, of 83 percent who say they were raised as Christians, only 55 percent still consider themselves as such. Only 10 percent of Belgians still attend church regularly.

The social implication is that Europe has developed an alternative to that value system that serves as a source of personal identity, community connection, morality, and more. People might find it in climate activism or secular organizations like these and others.

This phenomenon accompanies Western life in general, and it’s no wonder, therefore, that the motto “YOLO – You Only Live Once” has become so widespread. While this popular saying expresses an indisputable fact, it leads to a search for meaningless lives which prioritize a hedonistic lifestyle that has replaced the church with the entertainment industry. Actors, singers, and Instagram influencers have become objects of worship due to the glamorous and good lives that the best public relations firms pump out across the media.

Today, it’s difficult to assess the contribution of the “God is dead” movement to the European lifestyle, but we can assess the impact of demographic changes. In France alone, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in the last 30 years than Catholic churches in the last century, with France now having more than 1,500 mosques — nearly as many as exist in Istanbul, Turkey. In the last five years, the Catholic Church has built 20 churches, mostly in Paris, Pontoise, and Nice, while 60 churches have been decommissioned.

The Muslim population in Europe has grown significantly. France has approximately 5.72 million Muslims, Germany 4.95 million, and the United Kingdom 4.13 million. Muslims make up roughly five percent of Europe’s population overall, though in some countries like France and Sweden, the Muslim share is higher.

Research across 11 European cities including Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Stockholm shows Muslim communities concentrated in specific neighborhoods, with Muslims being three times more likely to live in areas significantly dominated by ethnic or religious minorities.

The immigration crisis facing Europe represents one of the most significant demographic shifts in modern history. Recent data shows that, as of 2024, the foreign-born population in European Union countries has increased to 14.1 percent from 13.6 percent in 2023, with a total of 63.3 million migrants residing in the European Union, of whom 71.4 percent come from outside the European Union. After peaking at 6.2 million in 2022, migrant inflows dropped to 4 million in 2023, with 77 percent coming from non-European Union countries. As of October 2024, Italy registered the largest number of sea arrivals with 53,000 immigrants, followed by Spain with 42,000 arrivals.

The relationship between immigration and crime in Europe remains one of the most contentious issues in contemporary politics, with research presenting a complex and often contradictory picture. However, specific studies reveal more nuanced findings. A 2024 study by Lund University found that nearly two-thirds of convicted rapists in Sweden since 2000 were first- or second-generation immigrants.

The flight of Jews from Europe represents one of the most alarming indicators of the continent’s deteriorating social fabric. A 2024 survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights revealed that 80 percent of Jewish respondents feel that antisemitism has grown in their country in the five years before the survey, with 90 percent encountering antisemitism online.

The statistics are staggering. Since 1972, approximately 100,000 Jews have left France, most emigrating to the United States. French Jews show a particular spike in interest: 6,500 people opened case files to immigrate, representing a 500-percent increase from just over 1,000 people during the same period the previous year. According to the latest data, since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, 1,100 French Jews moved to Israel last year. This year, approximately 4,500 Jews will leave France.

A survey of Jewish community leaders in Europe found that 23 percent said they were considering emigrating, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying they expected antisemitism to increase in Europe over the next decade. Just 12 percent of respondents said they believed it was “very safe” to live and practice openly as a Jew in their own city, down from 36 percent in 2008.

The situation has prompted stark warnings from religious leaders. Rabbi Meir Bar Hen, the Chief Rabbi of Barcelona, invited Jews to pack their belongings: “This place is lost. It’s better to leave early than late” for Israel. The community is “under attack” both because of radical Islam and because of the authorities’ unwillingness to confront it. “I encouraged them (the Jews) to buy a house in Israel.”

“Jews have no future in Europe,” echoed Rabbi Abraham Gigi, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels.

What remains of Jewish life in Europe today operates like this: Synagogues are fortified compounds. Schools have no signs but many private police and security guards. Homes have removed external mezuzahs. Jews don’t wear kippahs on the street or Star of David necklaces. They don’t give their Hebrew family names to taxi drivers. They tell their children not to speak Hebrew in public. There are no Israeli flags in their windows.

Are these Jewish lives?

The survey data confirms this grim reality: 76 percent of European Jews hide their Jewish identity at least occasionally and 34 percent avoid Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe. As a reaction to online antisemitism, 24 percent avoid posting content that would identify them as Jewish, 23 percent say that they limited their participation in online discussions, and 16 percent reduced their use of certain platforms.

What’s most surprising is that European leaders show great tolerance toward the waves of Jewish emigration from their countries — people who are affluent, businesspeople, media figures, engineers, doctors, scientists — and their voices are silenced. Silence.

Yes, there are statements about the need to fight antisemitism, but not much is done by authorities to preserve the civil rights of European Jews. In practice, Jews are placed in consent ghettos of silent agreement, and the grave situation is that the attackers gain broader influence and incentives and are not pursued by law enforcement.

In practice, extreme expressions have been adopted in the West in recent years due to the cowardice of politicians who sought votes from new audiences. Climate movements, for example, pushed decision-makers to adopt an agenda that drove energy prices across Europe sky-high and created excessive dependence on weather regarding the supply of water, electricity, heating, public systems, and more. This policy gave dictatorial countries like China and Russia the upper hand regarding control over energy sources and rare metals that are the basis for military power, which Russia and China exploit for geographical and political achievements.

The crisis unfolding on the Ukraine-Russia border or facing Taiwan is difficult to unify due to the weakness of Western leaders, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration stands almost alone against two nuclear powers.

The shame of Western leaders’ silence is even more severe regarding antisemitic expressions that surged in France, and somehow it seems that the wave of French Jewish emigration passed under the radar. The leadership weakness that succumbs to growing violence across the continent is evident, as the authorities’ role is to protect residents, not to sweep social problems under the carpet of silence.

But the appeasement journey of local leaders to violent communities and their leaders incentivizes global money networks seeking to destroy the West from within. Strong leadership would stand with women’s organizations and act to help and support Israeli women who experienced sexual abuse and war crimes. Strong leadership stands with Israel in the face of Hamas’ terror attack in October 2023 and forms an international coalition fighting radical Islam, understanding that at any moment hundreds of thousands of radical Muslims can be mobilized on European streets to carry out a global intifada.

I estimate that mass murder of Jews may occur again, outside of Israel. Through media networks, in a matter of hours, masses of incited Muslims and antisemites, and radical Right and Left, could join a particularly diabolical plan. Strong leadership would not allow the prosecution of Israel’s Prime Minister and pursue former Defense Minister Yoav Galant in international courts. Strong leadership in Europe would take a tough stance against Qatar and Turkey, which host Hamas leaders and other radical Muslim terrorist organizations.

Leaders with high morals regarding citizen freedom would provide weapons, ammunition, and support to Israel in the war against Iran, led by a fanatical regime aimed at expanding radical Islam’s grip on the world. Strong leadership would protect the country’s residents who suffer hell on earth.

But Western leaders like those in Britain, Canada, and France choose to support the violent side out of some appeasement that will benefit them politically. Only about 24 months have passed since the genocide that occurred in Israel, and the threats against Israel to impose harsh sanctions aimed at weakening Israel and appeasing Muslims in Europe prove once again above all that Europeans choose meaningless lives as long as they stick to hedonistic deception, like “a man can be a woman” or that if people eat fewer dairy products, the Earth will be saved from destruction.

However, these steps are irresponsible because there’s some perception that people perceived as liberals have a protective wall from criticism about the results of decisions that created the crises.

The decision to impose sanctions on Israel and accuse it of genocide based on newspaper photos later exposed as staged Hamas propaganda marks a moral collapse in the West. Across Europe, Israeli tourists are being hunted and harassed while governments look away — even as Israel, since the day Hamas invaded it, has supplied Gaza with food, water, electricity, fuel, and medicine. There are but a few times in history where an army has sustained its enemy’s civilians in the midst of war.

And yet, Jews are persecuted, Israelis flee arrests, and Jewish communities across Europe in 2025 live in ghettos of fear. Israel has become the world’s leper — sacrificed once again on the altar of appeasement.

The State of Israel was founded to ensure the survival and sovereignty of the Jewish People. The Zionist leaders of the early 20th century understood a truth that remains unchanged: The world does not transform simply because it drapes itself in the language of liberalism.

Nations are driven not by virtue but by interest — and the Jewish People, as a nation, must once again seize their own destiny rather than entrust it to the shifting sympathies of others. The West now faces a choice: a stable Middle East anchored by a strong, flourishing Jewish state, or a Middle East in flames, whose shockwaves will inevitably crash upon Europe’s shores.

Yaniv Weissman writes the newsletter, “Global Forces: Where Energy, Politics, and Science Converge.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

Fine Points [9 VIDEOS] Peggy Tierney

OCT 15, 2025 TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS

Many of you know that I’m a big fan of Chanel Rion of One America News (OAN.) Why? Because Rudy Giuliani (my hero) trusted her when it mattered most, she has courage and she has often been proven right in the end. I believe she is a very under-rated journalist.

Chanel has strong opinions about some of those conservative pundits who are rage posting about Israel of late and theories about why that is. If you want to hear the OTHER side of the story – read on. If you’ve made up your mind, skip this newsletter and have a great day!

I started following Chanel back in 2019 when she traveled to Ukraine with Rudy Giuliani to investigate corruption and money laundering and election rigging. I wrote about that corruption extensively in 2019.

Remember, Rudy Giuliani was the guy who took down the New York mafia with RICO, was James Comey’s boss, was the first to seriously investigate election fraud and the first to out the Hunter Biden laptop. I think Rudy is probably one of the best lawyers of his time.

Remember, Rudy Giuliani received a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop from John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a computer repair shop where Hunter left it. Why? Because he trusted Rudy to do the right thing. Back then, Rudy was Trump’s personal attorney and Chanel Rion was one of the few conservative journalists who had the guts to report the truth.

I trust Rudy and I trust Chanel and they both paid the price for standing up for what’s right – when nobody else would. AND, they have never wavered or flip flopped around.

In December 2019, Rion presented “Revealed: Ukrainian witnesses destroy Schiff’s case – exclusive with Rudy Giuliani” to defend President Trump against Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff led the first impeachment case against President Donald Trump in 2019.

In January 2020, OAN named Rion its chief White House correspondent.

Rudy shared the contents of Hunter’s laptop with the New York Post before the 2020 election – BUT Chanel Rion was actually the first journalist to see it and she also covered it extensively.

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published a major story about Hunter’s laptop. The Post confirmed that it had received a copy of the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani.

The laptop was left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019, where it was copied before being turned over to Rudy – who turned it over to the FBI.
The laptop revealed that Hunter Biden had arranged for a meeting between a Ukrainian businessman and his father, who was Vice President at the time.
The rest of the fake news censored and questioned the story and Team Obama-Biden claimed it was not real and it had the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
We all know now that it was very real – and the first two people who verified that for us were Rudy Giuliani and Chanel Rion.
In November 2020, Rion was one of the few journalists who supported President Trump‘s claims of voter fraud, specifically mail-in voting and machine fraud. Trump even cited a report by Rion stating that an election software maker “rigged” the election vote.
In December 2020, OAN and Rion were included as defendants in a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems.
In August 2021, Rion was named in a $1.6 BILLION defamation lawsuit by Dominion against OAN for promoting claims that it had engaged in election fraud.
In December 2021, Rion was named in a defamation lawsuit by former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss against OAN for broadcasting their engagement in voter fraud.
All cases were settled.
In July 2023, Rion was promoted to OAN’s chief national investigator and in July 2024 she started her primetime show on OAN.

CHANEL: “I stood up to THEM. YOU stood unfailingly by me, and OAN. Now, I’m back on PRIMETIME! Where NO media hoax is safe – NO narrative is sacred. We take them DOWN, and expose them ALL. Here’s to the good fight – EVERY NIGHT, and on demand. I look forward to this next chapter with you.”

So, that’s the background on Chanel and a few reasons that I trust her reporting. Could she prove me wrong? Sure. But I think she’s right about this. Her reporting basically solidifies my view that the Islamo-Communists, the RED-GREEN axis, are the real enemies of America, Israel and the free world.

One of Chanel’s latest broadcasts deals with how the Islamo-Communists were likely behind Hamas and their attack on Israel – and by extension, I conclude they were probably the funders behind the assassination attempt against Trump and Charlie’s murder. I’ve written extensively about the ties between the CCP and Hamas (the RED-GREEN AXIS and the Islamo-Communists) but Chanel connects the dots even further:

US’ Multi-Benefits from Israel’s Posture of Deterrence Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

October 15, 2025 “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
*Israel’s critical contribution to the deterrence, minimization and elimination of Iran’s nuclear, ballistic, conventional and terroristic capabilities – which poses a clear and present threat to all pro-US Arab regimes, as well as to the US national and homeland security – was demonstrated by the October 2024 and June 2025 Israel’s air force offensives, which devastated Iran’s air force, air defenses and ballistic capabilities.

*Israel’s June 13, 2025 air force offensive on Iran paved the road to the June 21, 2025 successful US bombing of three major Iranian nuclear installations, unimpeded by Iran’s air force and air defenses, which were devastated by the Israeli offensive. no other ally of the US could have demonstrated such intelligence and operational capabilities, rendering an exceptional added-value to the us posture of deterrence, regionally and globally.

*The critical Israeli smashing of Iran’s strategic posture in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the resulting setback to Iran’s strategic posture in Iraq and Yemen has led to Iran’s elimination from the regional deliberation of the fate of Iran’s proxy, Hamas, facilitating the unchallenged US domination of the process.

*Israel’s clobbering of Hamas’ terroristic capabilities has snatched the pro-US Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – at least temporarily – from the jaws of Hamas and its “parent company,” the Muslim Brotherhood, which aims to topple every national Islamic regime, and establish a universal Muslim society ruled by Islam as “the only divinely-ordained religion.”

*Israel’s trouncing of Iran’s chief proxy, Hezbollah, led to the dismantling of Syria’s pro-Russian Assad regime, along with the evacuation of the Russian military presence from the naval base in Tartus (established in 1971) and the air force base in Khmeimim (established in 2015), which severely undermines Russia’s strategic posture – and therefore bolsters the us strategic posture – in Syria, Lebanon, the Eastern Mediterranean and Libya.

*Israel’s June 1982 “Operation Mole Cricket 19” destroyed 20 Syrian-operated Soviet surface-to-air missile batteries – which the US considered impregnable – through innovative battle tactics and technology, including game-changing electronic countermeasures, disrupting radar tracking. 82 Soviet Migs, piloted by Syrian pilots, were downed (with no Israeli aircraft downed) in the largest dogfight since the Korean War. the lessons of the June 1982 Israeli operation are highlighted by the US Air Force’s training program and battle tactics.

*The 1976 Operation Entebbe showcased Israel’s elite counter-terrorism capabilities, significantly inspired US counter-terrorism operations, and accelerated the US decision to form the highly-trained counter-terrorism-dedicated Delta Force.

*Israel’s 1973 Yom Kippur War victory – facilitated by advanced US military systems – over soviet-armed Egypt, led to the realignment of Egypt from a strategic ally of the USSR and radical Arab regimes (e.g., Syria and Iraq) to a strategic ally of the US and moderate Arab regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia).

*Israel’s 1967 devastation of Egypt’s Soviet-supplied and trained military aborted the Egyptian drive to become the Soviet-supported Pan-Arab leader. Egyptian president Nasser strove to topple all pro-US regime (e.g., 70,000 Egyptian soldiers in Yemen aimed to topple the pro-US Saudi regime), and transferring control of the Arabian Peninsula oil to pro-Soviet regimes, at a time when the US was highly dependent on the importation of Persian Gulf oil. Israel’s military victory spared the US a severe economic and national security setback, while denying the USSR a dramatic national security bonanza.

*the aforementioned facts highlight Israel’s role as a unique added-value-ally of the US, in addition to Israel serving as a leading innovation center for the US high tech sector, a battle-tested laboratory of the US Armed Forces and the US defense and aerospace industries (saving the US mega-billion-dollar in research and development, increasing US exports and expanding US employment), a show-room demonstrating the edge of US military systems over global competition, a ground-breaking source of intelligence, and the largest US military base with no need for us soldiers.

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Peace in the Middle East begins with ending Palestinianism. BOB GOLDBERG

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Peace Plan declares: Jewish sovereignty is not the problem. It’s the precedent.

OCT 15, 2025 The Future of Jewish

The Trump Peace Plan is not a map. It is a shift in narrative.

Its borders are a deliberate act of moral realignment that eliminates Palestinianism. And let’s call it what it is and how U.S. President Donald Trump defines it: Palestinianism is the sanctification of the annihilation of the Jewish People — a creed that recasts Jewish extermination as justice, a modern blood libel institutionalized into policy, sustained by the fiction that Palestinians are eternal refugees entitled to reclaim land that was never lost.

This is no small thing. The proposal marks the first time in decades that a major diplomatic framework has declared moral clarity a prerequisite to political progress. It aims to halt the adoption of the oldest hatred — the notion of the Jew as history’s malign force — into the bloodstream of international policy. By reversing that narrative, it initiates the long-overdue task of dismantling the ideological scaffolding that keeps the conflict alive.

The plan also performs an act of exposure. It isolates the “pro-Palestinian” movement as the true obstacle to peace. It is a doctrine that replaces nation-building with negation, that turns the rejection of Jewish sovereignty into a moral commandment.

Indeed, the real goal of the proposal is to eliminate Islamism and Palestinianism, the co-joined doctrinal claim that the Jewish nation must disappear to bring about a perfect world. Palestinianism drove the demonization and delegitimization of Israel and Jews. It has stoked the latest blood libel that Israel is guilty of genocide.

Eliminating it deprives the Western haters of Israel, particularly “anti-Zionists” whose ideology about Israel being born in sin made Palestinianism possible, of their funding and their purpose.

At the heart of this shift is power — unapologetically wielded. Talk of peace does not produce peace. Pressure does. Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey have not leaned on Hamas out of sudden enlightenment; they have done so because Israel and the United States have shown the will to compel compliance. Silence follows when Israeli jets destroy Iranian missile depots, when Hezbollah’s arsenals vanish overnight, when Hamas operatives find themselves hunted even in Doha. Interests align when power is exercised, not when it is theorized.

This is the strategic foundation of the Trump plan: Align moral clarity with military credibility. Use normalization, investment, and access to prosperity as levers to compel behavior — demilitarization over destruction, governance over grievance. That is how the fiction of perpetual victimhood suffocates: not by argument, but by attrition.

The Abraham Accords are the living proof of the plan. What began as bilateral normalization has evolved into a regional architecture — an alliance of the willing, bound by trade, energy, and security. Each new participant diminishes the oxygen that sustains Palestinianism. Under this framework, nations are rewarded for integration and penalized for delegitimization. It is diplomacy with consequences, not condolences.

Reconstruction under this plan is selective by design. Those ruled by Hamas or consumed by rejectionism will be left behind. Progress will flow to cantons that deliver education, services, and law while publicly renouncing the doctrine of elimination. The Abraham Accords’ durability through war and crisis has already shown that state-level cooperation can outlast slogans. The next phase is to translate that resilience into Palestinian political life: a slow replacement of mythology with municipal success.

In a perfect world, the apostles of Palestinianism would stand before history and renounce the “right of return” — the demographic fantasy that would erase the Jewish state. They will not. They will fade, deprived of funds and platforms. Palestinianism survives only where it is subsidized: in schools that teach martyrdom as destiny, in NGOs that monetize grievance, in institutions that mistake perpetual aid for progress. The remedy is simple and unsentimental: conditional funding. Aid tied to education that teaches coexistence, not annihilation. Governance training, not indoctrination. Transparent audits, not blank checks.

While Palestinianism may persist for some time, its supporters will gradually lose resources and influence. The Trump plan continues reconstruction, but areas controlled by Hamas or deeply rooted in Palestinianism will be excluded.

Instead, governance will focus on providing services, education, and law, rejecting extreme positions. The Abraham Accords show that strong state relationships can survive adversity, and Trump and Israel aim to leverage these ties to encourage change within Palestinian politics.

This is how rhetoric becomes reality. Diplomatic isolation for the obstinate. Incentives for the accountable. The use of American power and Israeli resolve to turn moral clarity into political architecture.

Enemies are not defeated when they repent. They are defeated when their ideology exacts a cost they can no longer bear. The Trump plan creates that cost. It rewards states that abandon Jew-hatred and isolates those that persist. It builds a political economy in which anti-Judaism and Palestinianism are liabilities, not causes. Recent history shows that the reconstruction of evil regimes is possible, but only when their capacity to spread their creed is destroyed and replaced under the steady shadow of force; the capacity to transmit and implement their ideologies is also destroyed.

The Trump proposal seeks to reverse the tide of delegitimization and isolate the doctrine of Islamism and Palestinianism. The urgent task is to convert rhetoric into institutions. Let us use this moment to amplify Israel’s newfound power and America’s influence, to reinforce the Abraham Accords and agreements necessary for performing the unglamorous work of building a political alternative to annihilationist myth.

The small steps matter: local competence, conditional aid, diplomatic rewards, and an international consensus that the “right of return” and the questioning of Israel’s existence should no longer be weaponized.

The Trump proposal does not promise utopia. It promises consequences. It seeks to end the moral inversion that has long defined the conflict, the one that casts Jewish survival as aggression and Arab rejectionism as virtue. Its goal is to re-civilize the language of peace itself, to drain it of cannot and restore it to purpose.

That is not idealism. That is how peace is made in the real world: through narratives reversed, power applied, and delusion starved of oxygen. Focus there and the rest will follow.

This is a guest essay by Bob Goldberg, who writes the newsletter, “The New Zionist Times.”

Trump’s Great Speech at the Knesset: A Historic Moment, But One Key Flaw Avi Abelow

October 15, 2025

President Donald Trump’s speech at the Knesset last week marked a significant and monumental moment for Israel, one that celebrated the remarkable deal that freed all the live hostages as a first step, something that Hamas never agreed to in past deals.

Trump’s words, delivered with the kind of energy and enthusiasm we’ve come to expect from him, were filled with optimism, showing deep, deep support for Israel, its security, and its right to defend itself. And he did not care about making the leaders of the Arab world wait for him for over 7 hours in the “peace” summit in Egypt.

There’s no denying the scale of this accomplishment. Trump’s vision of a Middle East where Israel stands as a pillar of strength and a central partner to the United States, as well as the broader world, is truly inspiring. The plan that he and Netanyahu are working together on to create a land bridge that connects Israel to Saudi Arabia so to establish a direct economic pipeline between the U.S. and India, with Israel as the linchpin in that future, is bold and innovative.

Yet, as grand as the speech was, and as ambitious as the Trump-Netanyahu plan promises to be, it still misses one crucial, undeniable truth: it won’t bring peace.

Let’s be clear. The idea of peace in the Middle East, especially with Israel at the center, is a noble one, but we have to be honest about the conditions that must exist for peace to truly take root. The reality is that a mere pause in hostilities does not equate to peace. The speech might have painted an image of hope for a new era of relations between Israel and its neighbors, but it doesn’t directly address the fundamental issue that has plagued this region for over a millennium: the ideological and religious jihadist agenda that calls for the obliteration of Israel and the Islamic takeover of the world.

What Trump and Netanyahu fail to communicate to both of our countries, and the world, is the nature of the enemy we face, an enemy not simply bent on territorial conquest, but one deeply rooted in a 1,400-year-old religious ideology that views the entire world as its rightful dominion. That is the motivation behind the leaders of Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Iran etc. That’s not something that can be solved with temporary ceasefires or economic deals, no matter how well-intentioned or strategically brilliant. To the Muslim world, this deal is a humiliating temporary defeat, to be treated as a n Islamic hudna, ceasefire, for them to patiently continue their plan of utter dominance in the name of Islam in other ways until they can return to the military means.

If Trump and Netanyahu truly wanted to establish a lasting peace in the Middle East their plan would have looked like this…

A plan based on understanding the true threat of our enemy, that also truly harnesses the strength and purpose of the Jewish nation in the broader tapestry of human history to bring true peace for humanity.

Their plan would have focused on something even more transformative and spiritually resonant: the expansion of Israel to encompass its rightful Biblical borders, protect all the minorities in the region also persecuted by jihadi Islam, and with that, the one, powerful act of rebuilding the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

Think about it. What message would it send to the Muslim world if, as part of a peace plan, Trump & Netanyahu announced a plan to not only expand Israel’s borders, but to restore the holiest site in Judaism, the Third Temple? This isn’t just about land; they launched this religious war against us they named “the Al-Aqsa flood”. This war is about reclaiming our heritage, our legacy, and our sovereignty on our ancestral soil.

A rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem would be a clear signal to the Muslim world that the Jews are back in full force, not just as a temporary fixture or a historical relic, but as a powerful, sovereign nation reclaiming its rightful place on the world stage. This would not just be a victory for Israel, it would be a powerful message to the world that God’s moral laws are being upheld once again in the very heart of the world.

Such a monumental step would have made it clear that Israel’s commitment to peace isn’t simply about appeasing its enemies or military victories, but about sending a clear message that the Jewish people are not going anywhere. And perhaps most importantly, it would create the conditions necessary for the world to see Israel not as an occupier or an outsider, but as a moral force, a beacon of light in a region where the darkness of jihadi Islam has long reigned for centuries.

Peace with a genocidal jihadi Islam doesn’t come from diplomatic treaties; it comes from strength and sovereignty, from standing firm in your beliefs, and from showing the world that you are a force for good.

Rebuilding the Third Temple is the one and only powerful symbol of that strength, that would be internalized by our enemies. A symbol of the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, and of the moral and divine purpose that guides the nation of Israel.

In the end, Trump’s speech was a tremendous moment for Israel, but it falls short of addressing the true path to peace in the Middle East.

This ceasefire deal may provide extremely temporary relief, and the release of our live hostages, but it is only by recognizing the divine right of the Jewish people to their land and their destiny that true peace, lasting peace, can be achieved.

If we truly want peace, we must embrace the power of our heritage, liberate and apply sovereignty over all of our Biblical ancestral lands, rebuild our Temple, and show the world the true strength of Israel, as a sovereign nation with an eternal purpose.

Until then, we must remain vigilant, for peace cannot come while we remain in the shadow of an ideology that seeks our destruction, and the destruction of the whole freedom loving world.

Only through our strength, our sovereignty, and our faith can we pave the way for a lasting peace in the region, and for humanity.

This doesn’t just require a deep emunah, faith in God, but an even deeper faith and understanding of our purpose as the Jewish nation living back as sovereign in God’s holy land, chosen for us.

Am Yisrael Chai!!!

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Seize China’s Companies Now by Gordon G. Chang
October 15, 2025

As Bloomberg reported, this year Beijing offered to invest at least $1 trillion in America.
Chinese officials attached two conditions to their offer. “The first required that the U.S. loosen its scrutiny of investments originating from China,” Bloomberg reported. “The second: that any Chinese factories built in the U.S. get a break on tariffs for any inputs they imported.”
Taking more of China’s money is an especially bad idea. With Chinese cash comes Chinese influence, and China has far too much of it in the U.S. already.
Although the Dutch government is not confiscating shares of the company, its assumption of management functions will either slow or stop the leakage of technology to China.
China… still needs foreign technology, and, short of theft, purchasing it would be the easiest and least expensive way to obtain it.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Beijing is seeking to flood the U.S. with cash, especially if it gets the Trump administration to relax export controls.
America does not need more money to continue the development of leading technologies. In the race to dominate tech, the U.S. will make the fastest progress by keeping Chinese companies as far away from its shores as possible. The Netherlands, with its ejection of China’s managers from Nexperia, just showed Washington what to do next.

Finally, a government is moving to deny China the ability to pillage a foreign technology business. On October 12, the Dutch government, citing concerns about technology transfers, announced it had taken control of Chinese-owned Nexperia, a commodity microchip maker. Pictured: The Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs building, in The Hague, photographed on January 3, 2016. (Photo by Vysotsky/Wikimedia Commons)

On October 12, the Dutch government, citing concerns about technology transfers, announced it had taken control of Chinese-owned Nexperia, a commodity microchip maker. The Netherlands invoked for the first time the Availability of Goods Act to assume management of a company.

Finally, a government is moving to deny China the ability to pillage a foreign technology business. Other nations should follow Amsterdam’s action.

Wingtech, the 100% owner of Nexperia, called Holland’s actions “excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias.” The Chinese company also complained of a “cloaked power grab.”

The Chinese foreign ministry immediately weighed in too. “Let me stress that China always opposes overstretching the concept of national security and taking discriminatory moves that target companies from certain countries,” said Spokesperson Lin Jian at his regular press conference on the 13th. “The relevant country should uphold market principles and refrain from politicizing trade issues. China is firmly resolved in defending its own legitimate and lawful rights and interests.”

The Dutch takeover came not a moment too soon. As Bloomberg reported, this year Beijing offered to invest at least $1 trillion in America.

Chinese officials attached two conditions to their offer. “The first required that the U.S. loosen its scrutiny of investments originating from China,” Bloomberg reported. “The second: that any Chinese factories built in the U.S. get a break on tariffs for any inputs they imported.”

The Chinese proposal, if accepted, would amount to a significant break from the trend in America of tightening restrictions on Chinese investments. The resistance to China’s money was symbolized by the White House’s robust America First Investment Policy memorandum, issued in February.

Trump is now moving in a different direction, however, publicly boasting about obtaining large investment commitments from the EU ($600 billion), Japan ($550 billion), and South Korea ($350 billion).

Will he be willing to accept Chinese money as well?

Taking more of China’s money is an especially bad idea. With Chinese cash comes Chinese influence, and China has far too much of it in the U.S. already.

“If there is anything America doesn’t need,” trade expert Alan Tonelson told Gatestone “it is a much bigger footprint by Chinese entities inevitably controlled by China’s Communist Party.”

In China’s system, even privately owned entities must comply with Communist Party directives to share whatever technology they have with the People’s Liberation Army, pursuant to Xi Jinping’s doctrine of “military-civil fusion.”

“China’s reported investment offer can only mean that the tariffs and export controls — however threadbare the latter too often have been — are damaging China’s economy and slowing its technological progress, especially in the military sphere,” said Tonelson, who blogs at RealityChek.

That brings us back to Nexperia. Although the Dutch government is not confiscating shares of the company, its assumption of management functions will either slow or stop the leakage of technology to China.

China’s unofficial propagandists and others are accusing the Dutch government of, among other things, buckling under pressure from Washington. “This didn’t happen in a vacuum — it coincides perfectly with Trump’s new ‘50% rule,’ which drags every subsidiary of a Chinese parent company onto America’s Entity List,” posted @BarrettYouTube, a Shenzhen-based observer, on X, discussing the Nexperia takeover. “It looks a lot like Europe is just following Washington’s lead yet again.”

On September 29, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a rule automatically adding to its Entity List all subsidiaries owned 50% or more by companies already on the list. No American may sell goods or services to listed companies without a license. Commerce added Wingtech to the Entity List in December 2024.

The Economic Affairs Ministry of the Netherlands stated that the timing of its action was “purely coincidental” and that, in the words of Reuters, “there was no U.S. involvement in its decision regarding Nexperia.”

The Dutch government said it was concerned about the possible loss of “crucial technological knowledge,” adding, “The loss of these capabilities could pose a risk to Dutch and European economic security.”

Amsterdam had every right to be concerned. It appears that Wingtech was planning to break apart Nexperia and transfer assets back to China.

Taking foreign technology is at the core of China’s plans to lead the world. Xi Jinping’s Made in China 2025 program poured money into ten areas, including semiconductors. China has made progress in the area during the decade, but many believe the results have not been commensurate with the resources dedicated.

China, in short, still needs foreign technology, and, short of theft, purchasing it would be the easiest and least expensive way to obtain it.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Beijing is seeking to flood the U.S. with cash, especially if it gets the Trump administration to relax export controls.

America does not need more money to continue the development of leading technologies. In the race to dominate tech, the U.S. will make the fastest progress by keeping Chinese companies as far away from its shores as possible. The Netherlands, with its ejection of China’s managers from Nexperia, just showed Washington what to do next.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Follow Gordon G. Chang on X (formerly Twitter)

Tell The Truth About Islam [7:06] Pat Condell

Mar 19, 2012

It isn’t pretty, but it’s still the truth.

Inquiry demanded into “anti-Islam press”.

‘Honour’ attack numbers revealed by UK police forces

BBC reveals huge scale of honour attacks in Britain, fails to mention the word “Islam”

Muslim “men” filmed rape of schoolgirl

Muslims blocking the street to pray

Islamist stops university debate with threats of violence

London School of Economics passes anti-blasphemy law

University campuses are ‘hotbeds of Islamic extremism’

Sharia law and middle class feminism

3500 girls at risk of genital mutilation in London

British girls undergo horror of genital mutilation despite tough laws

Rise in female genital mutilation in London

Muslim staff escaped NHS hygiene rule

Child abuse claims at UK madrassas ‘tip of iceberg’

Thinktank issues new report on madrassas

Girls forced into marriage at the age of nine

Asian communities hampering child sex inquiries

3 Muslims jailed for “death to gays” leaflets

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A move is afoot to repeal the Real ID Act of 2005, but the real power lies with the people LEO HOHMANN

There is a way to rebel against this draconian anti-American mandate but if we wait on the politicians it will never happen.

OCT 14, 2025

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is one of the few members of Congress that still believes in the concept limited government and citizen privacy.

Last month, Paul introduced Senate Bill 2769, to repeal Title II of the REAL ID Act of 2005, the controversial federal law that set federal standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards. This is an area within which the federal government has no legal authority to operate.

Passed in the wake of 9/11, the REAL ID Act requires states to adopt federally approved standards for ID cards, effectively turning driver’s licenses into a form of national identification.

To fly domestically or enter certain federal buildings, Americans must present a REAL ID-compliant card.
States that resist federal mandates risk having their residents barred from boarding commercial flights.
Privacy advocates argue the law creates a de facto national database of personal information.

It’s important to note that President Trump is all on board with the Real ID and digitization. He is nowhere to be found on this issue when we need him. He’s in bed with the technocrats who are all about digitizing our lives and using technology to control where we travel, what we eat, what we buy, and what healthcare we receive, among other things.

Without nationalized standards for ID, the feds can’t take the next step, which is to digitize the IDs and consolidate all data in one place, where it can be used to control people more easily and efficiently. Instead of a separate ID for driving, traveling abroad (passport), working and banking (the Social Security number), it will all be consolidated in one place in a digital wallet on your phone. If anyone gets out of line, all the government will have to do is turn off your digital ID, or limit where it will work and where it won’t.

Paul has long criticized REAL ID as a federal overreach into state authority and personal liberty. He said in a statement:

“Forcing states into a national ID system is not security. It’s surveillance. Americans should not have to ask Washington for permission to travel inside their own country.”

By repealing Title II, Paul’s bill would restore state autonomy and remove federal coercion tied to ID compliance, noted the Liberty Conservative News.

Liberty Conservative News further observed, rightly in my opinion:

“For liberty-minded Americans, the law represents exactly the kind of creeping federal control the Constitution was designed to prevent.”

While Rand Paul’s legislation is laudible, I believe it’s too little, too late.

We the people must take ownership and resist this nationalization and digitization of our identities.

If it’s possible in your state to “downgrade” from a Real ID to a standard ID, I suggest you do it now, while you still can. This is the ultimate act of rebellion and I know several people who have already done it.

Ha Ha Islamophobia [5:55] Pat Condell

Nov 30, 2012

It’s Islamophobia Awareness Month

An Historic Dawn, or a Raw Deal? by Mark Tapson

Israel’s joyous welcome for freed hostages – but at what cost?

October 14, 2025 Front-page Magazine

On October 13, 2025, Israel erupted in collective relief and jubilation as the final 20 living Israeli hostages, seized by Hamas during the barbaric October 7, 2023 assault, crossed back into the homeland after over two grueling years of captivity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed it as “a moral victory for the State of Israel.”

Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, a vigil site, swelled with 65,000 tear-streaked faces glued to massive screens. Emotional footage captured heart-wrenching reunions: Omri Miran, 48, embraced by his two little daughters after over 730 days in darkness; twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman wearing the Maccabi Tel Aviv jerseys they had asked for upon being released; and soldier Nimrod Cohen, 20, greeted by his rejoicing family. Medical teams were ready to begin tending to the survivors’ physical and psychological scars—malnutrition, infections, and tunnel-induced trauma.

This triumphant moment crowns the historic Trump Peace Accord, a 20-point plan unveiled by President Donald Trump last month, which orchestrated the end of the war in Gaza and is potentially redefining Middle East diplomacy. Brokered through tireless shuttle diplomacy in Egypt, Qatar, and Washington, D.C.—bolstered by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and advisor Jared Kushner—the accord’s first phase mandates a phased ceasefire, Israeli troop withdrawals from most of Gaza, Hamas disarmament, and international aid influxes to rebuild the devastated enclave.

Trump, arriving in Israel to a thunderous standing ovation in the Knesset, declared the Holy Land “at peace.” Echoing his Abraham Accords legacy, this deal aims to avert regional escalation—sidestepping Iranian proxies—and paves the way for Gaza’s redevelopment, potentially drawing billions of dollars from Gulf allies. Speaking beside Netanyahu, Trump declared, “As far as I’m concerned, the war is over.”

The peace plan didn’t earn The Art of the Deal author a Nobel Peace Prize, but we all know that even if Trump had built a time machine and undid World War II and the Holocaust by traveling back to kill Hitler in 1939, the militantly Progressive Nobel judges would still deny him the honor. No loss, though – the Prize was long ago devalued anyway when it was awarded to Palestinian proto-terrorist Yassar Arafat, and its worthlessness was confirmed when it was given to Barack Obama for literally no reason at all.

But the euphoria over the deal in Israel and the rest of the civilized world is tempered with profound sorrow. Of the roughly 250 souls abducted in the 2023 bloodbath—including civilians from kibbutzim and the Nova music festival—168 eventually returned alive through prior ceasefires, rescues, and releases. At least 75 did not survive their brutal ordeal, whether executed, perishing from starvation, untreated wounds, or friendly fire. Families of the fallen mourned amid the cheers, their grief underscoring Hamas’ savage abuse of the hostages chained in tunnels, denied medicine, and psychologically as well as physically tortured.

Furthermore, in exchange for the 20 remaining living hostages, Israel consented to free nearly 2,000 Palestinians from its prisons: about 250 serving life sentences for terrorism convictions and roughly 1,700 administrative detainees held since the war’s outbreak. Buses ferried them to Ramallah amid jubilant Palestinian crowds.

As Israel celebrated, Trump jetted to an Egypt summit of world leaders for a signing ceremony regarding the first phase of the peace agreement. He declared,

Everybody’s happy about it like I’ve never seen before, actually. I’ve done other deals, and people don’t care as much. Big deals, I think they’re big deals. But this is something that’s taken off like a rocket ship, and it did from the beginning.

But a focus on big deals is short-sighted. Trump believes every world conflict can be solved by bringing people to the table and hammering out, or being pressured to accept, a compromise, for which he gets the credit. This can be effective for some conflicts but not where deeper passions like ideological fervor are at stake. Before the Knesset today, he declared confidently that “the forces of chaos, terror, and ruin that have plagued the region for decades” are now “totally defeated.” This is dishearteningly naïve. He cannot seem to grasp that what may be a peace plan for one side is simply a stalling and regrouping tactic for the other. Israel simply wants to live in peace, but her neighbors will never ultimately accept anything less than a “Palestine” that is freed “from the river to the sea” through the genocidal erasure of Israel and Jews.

How many of the nearly 2000 freed Palestinian prisoners will be exalted among their people, and the worldwide ummah, as soldiers of Allah, and resume their murderous Jew-hatred? How many future Yahya Sinwars are among them, plotting more “Al-Aqsa Flood” slaughters?

It is a blessing that the remaining Israeli hostages of Hamas are thankfully reunited with their families. Make no mistake, however – the war in Gaza may be over as far as President Trump is concerned, but it will never be over for Israel as long as the Jew-hating ideology that “plagued the region,” as he put it, continues to flourish.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior

Mark Tapson Mark Tapson is the Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, focusing on popular culture. He is also the host of an original podcast on Frontpage, “The Right Take With Mark Tapson”. Follow him on Substack.

Why No Female Israeli Hostages Are Coming Home by Amy Mek

Will the West ever face the truth about why?

October 14, 2025 Front-page Magazine

The media won’t say it, but here is the truth.

Some of the male Israeli hostages are finally coming home. All were tortured. Most were murdered.

And the women… they were ALL slaughtered every last one of them. I can not even begin to comprehend the horror they endured. Yet the media refuses to explain why Hamas terrorists act this way.

Because the answer leads straight to Muhammad himself — Islam’s founder and the model for jihad.

Historical fact: After the Battle of Badr, Muhammad’s followers slaughtered defenseless prisoners — fathers and sons hacked to pieces. Muhammad personally ordered the beheading of captives, mocked the dying, and even celebrated their deaths. He “revealed” Quran 8:67, declaring: “It is not for any prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land.”

From the 800 men and boys executed at Qurayza, to women like Umm Qirfa torn apart by camels… This is not a distortion of Islam.

This is Islam’s origin story. So when Hamas tortures, rapes, and executes hostages, they are not betraying Muhammad’s example. They are imitating it.

And that’s why the media stays silent. Because telling the truth would expose the ideological root of Islamic terror.

Pro-Tip: Expose Islam like your life depends on it…

The real war has just begun. GUY GOLDSTEIN

For Israel and for the Jewish People, this is only the intermission.

OCT 14, 2025

As the bombs fall silent in Gaza, the diplomats congratulate themselves and the commentators breathe a sigh of relief.

The world tells itself the war is over.

But for Israel and for the Jewish People, this is only the intermission. The ceasefire marks the end of the kinetic phase, not the end of the war. The real war, the one for the legitimacy of Israel, the safety of Jews, and the truth itself, is only beginning. What lies ahead is not a peace process, but a global campaign of delegitimization, organized hatred, and institutional warfare that has already passed its point of no return.

In many Western cities, the protests that filled the streets during the war have not faded into memory. They have hardened into infrastructure. Movements capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands at a moment’s notice are not protests; they are mass-mobilization systems. They operate like a new kind of army, with social media as its logistics, NGOs as its command centers, and ideology as its fuel. These networks no longer seek influence within the system. They are openly arrayed against it. They are fighting not for reform, but for replacement.

We have entered the end game, and we are starting from behind. Every action by one side feeds the radicalization of the other. The anti-Israel movement grows, creating backlash, which then validates its victim narrative, fueling recruitment. Pro-Israel efforts emerge to counter it, but these are portrayed as oppressive, further strengthening the opposing cause. Neither side can de-escalate without appearing defeated. The cognitive battlefield has become self-sustaining. There is no reset button.

This is not another cycle of antisemitism that time or diplomacy can cure. The old defenses are gone. The moral antibodies that once restrained public hatred, the memory of the Holocaust, the consensus around civil rights, the bipartisan support for Israel, have either eroded or turned against us. “Never again” has become “never again for anyone,” a slogan that strips the phrase of its meaning and redirects it against the people who inspired it.

The frameworks meant to prevent hatred now encode it. DEI programs treat Jewish identity as “privileged.” International law treats Jewish sovereignty as criminal. Holocaust memory itself is weaponized by those who equate the Jewish state with Nazism. The antibodies have mutated. The system no longer defends us; it attacks us.

And while this transformation has been underway for years, the past two have been decisive. Since October 7th, the machinery of global opinion has been working at full capacity to poison every channel of discourse. Israel’s moral case, the simplest moral case in the world, has been lost in translation by design. The Qatari buyout of the academy and the media created a filter that no amount of truth could pass through. We noticed it early, complained about it loudly, and then did nothing to match it.

Two years later, what do we have to show for it?

A few scattered initiatives. Some courageous individuals. A handful of small wins. But no systemic response. We have the same old organizations, the same leadership, the same defensive instincts. We had two years to build a real counteroffensive, and we spent them debating the ethics of survival. We are still trying to be more moral lambs in the hope it will dissuade the wolves. We are still throwing galas while our enemies build armies.

Across the world, you can find a thousand small projects, passionate, sincere, and almost entirely irrelevant to the scale of the war being waged against us. The so-called “influencer brigades,” the boutique NGOs, the donor-funded think pieces, these are acts of individual heroism standing in for institutional competence. They rely on bursts of energy and moments of outrage, but they lack permanence, coordination, and reach. They are candlelight in a storm.

On the other side is a professionalized system with permanent funding, infrastructure, and strategy. It produces narratives, institutions, and policies at industrial scale. They run a campaign. We run on adrenaline. They are building a civilization. We are posting responses.

Look at their architecture. They have sovereign wealth funds, international media outlets, intergovernmental bodies, global NGOs, and university systems all aligned around a single cause. They have doctrine, coordination, and patience. They have turned intersectionality into theology, propaganda into scholarship, and boycotts into virtue. Their infrastructure is professional. Ours is improvisational. They play for generations. We play for news cycles. And then we wonder why we keep losing.

This is the bitter irony of the post-Holocaust Jewish condition. We became so accustomed to winning the moral argument that we forgot how to win the actual one. We internalized a bargain that the rest of the world never agreed to.

After the Holocaust, the West promised “never again” through moral consensus and institutional safeguards. We took that promise at face value. We built our survival strategy around it. If we proved ourselves moral, we believed that we would be safe. We built an army that apologized for defending itself, a foreign policy that begged for understanding, and a political culture obsessed with moral optics.

It was noble. It was necessary. It also became a psychological prison. The wolves never agreed to the rules, yet we still act as if restraint will earn mercy. We have spent 80 years being shocked that the moral righteousness of our cause has not been enough to protect us. Every generation rediscovers the same surprise, writes the same essays, and holds the same conferences. And in doing so, we prove that we have learned nothing.

The post-war West shares this pathology. Its fear of moral compromise has made it incapable of responding to evil until it is too late. Our adversaries have learned to operate just below the threshold of Western response. Cognitive warfare is perfect for this world, always cruel enough to damage, never clear enough to justify retaliation. Israel, the last society still bound by moral memory, is uniquely vulnerable to this strategy. The instinct to stay clean, to stay good, to stay better, has become a form of disarmament.

And now we face the illusion of peace. The ceasefire, the humanitarian relief, the diplomatic relief, all are the quiet moments in which our enemies consolidate. During “peace,” the cognitive war intensifies. The DEI bureaucracies expand their power. Academic departments that equate Zionism with racism become permanent fixtures. The International Criminal Court’s investigations normalize the criminalization of Jewish defense. Wikipedia policies are rewritten so that our sources are downgraded and theirs become canonical. Every “temporary” outrage becomes a permanent norm.

In cultural life, this is the moment of embedding. Documentaries, novels, and classrooms begin to fix the new moral reality: the Palestinian as victim-saint, the Jew as aggressor-demon. The 10-year-olds being educated in this framework will be the policymakers of 2035. By then, the cognitive war will not be something we fight against; it will be the air everyone breathes. The next generation will not even remember a time when Israel was presumed legitimate.

The logic is clear. For our adversaries, peace is preparation. Every truce is an operational pause. Every diplomatic breakthrough is an opportunity to rebuild, retrain, and reframe. Israel treats ceasefires as endings. They treat them as beginnings. That is why every so-called peace has led directly to the next round of violence. The battlefield changes shape, but the war never stops.

If this continues, we know the timeline. In five years, Israel will face another campaign of delegitimization that constrains its military options. In 10 years, the graduates of today’s DEI programs will hold the levers of Western diplomacy, law, and media. In 50 years, the consensus that once said Israel had a right to exist will have been replaced by one that says its very existence is the problem. The next October 7th will not come out of Gaza; it will come out of a world that believes it is moral to erase the Jewish state.

So, what now? Do we accept this as fate? Do we retreat behind our walls, real or imagined, and wait for the next pogrom in a different language? Or do we decide, finally, that we are done being the world’s moral object lesson?

This is not about better PR. It is about power. It is about building the intellectual, cultural, and strategic infrastructure that should have been built decades ago. It is about creating institutions with the same scale, coordination, and ambition as those that now oppose us. It is about replacing the reflex of moral pleading with the habit of moral confidence.

We have two choices. Either we become a people capable of defending ourselves in every domain, or we prepare our children for the next ghetto. The bombs may have stopped falling, but the real war, the war over meaning, over memory, over moral reality itself, is only beginning.

And this time, the only way to win it is to fight it.

Short thoughts as the live hostages are now home in Israel. Avi Abelow

It is miraculous to see hostages come home, and for that I am thankful.

Netanyahu defied all odds in succeeding in getting all the live hostages out of captivity without succumbing to the dangerous pressure of the opposition, the hostage protest movement and even the top echelon of the security/intelligence establishment.

Still, it’s a horrible deal.

Tragic that it came at the cost of releasing hundreds of despicable and dangerous terrorists, all who should have been given the death penalty.

This is a repeat of the disastrous Shalit deal. I remember being adamantly against it, knowing it was a mistake. Yet I still sat my young children in front of the TV to witness his return from Hamas captivity. It felt historic… but deep down, I knew the price was too high.

Not PC to say it, but true: the victims of Oct. 7 paid the price for that deal. Now we’re repeating the same mistake, again 😞

Heartbroken for the families of terror victims, whose murderers are going free in this deal.

Heartbroken for the IDF soldiers who fought and were killed or injured, only to be told the war is over while it definitely is not, as Hamas still rules Gaza.

And no, business deals and investing money into Arab Muslim countries that support jihad against Israel and the West, won’t erase 1,400 + years of jihadist ideology to subjugate all infidels and take over the world.

I know Trump and Netanyahu have big plans to change the Middle East, but so long as our enemies are not called out for what they are, Islamonaz*is, and not treated as such, then we will continue to have challenging times ahead.

Still, God has a plan. We’re in the days of redemption. The light is coming. But this war didn’t remove nearly enough evil as we had hoped.

Strengthen your faith. Despite the mistakes of our leaders, the Lion of Zion has been awaked. We are on the path to fulfilling our destiny as the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland.

And help me pressure for the death penalty to finally be instituted in Israel so no horrific deals like this can even happen again.

Am Yisrael Chai!!!

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Diplomacy with a Baseball Bat by Lawrence Kadish
October 13, 2025

The only people who should be surprised that U.S. President Donald Trump was able to broker a peace deal in Gaza are the ones who continue to underestimate this man.

The fact is, his language is far more deliberate and far more calculating than what often appears to be “top of the mind” or extemporaneous. So when he told Hamas that if they did not come to the peace table, he would give Israel a free hand to “finish the job,” the remaining leaders of that terrorist organization had to consider that Trump was telling them the game was up.

It was diplomacy with a baseball bat. In this world, filled with despots, dictators and destructive leaders, as you will find in Iran, this tactic may be the only one that brings desired results.

Here is another lesson being learned by world leaders.

If you elect a terrorist organization to be your government, as the Palestinians in Gaza did by electing Hamas, and your elected government then conducts atrocities by raping Israeli women, slaughtering children, murdering 1,200 people, and kidnapping 251 others as hostages, Israel will descend on you with a righteous might that destroys your world.

Hamas sent thousands of their murderers across the border with the specific intent of upending the rapprochement beginning to take place between Israel and the Arab world. What they did not count on was an Israeli response that recognized this attack for what it was – war – and war is ugly and violent. Those Hamas voters who danced in the streets of Gaza during and after the October 7^th attack discovered that their elected government had just committed suicide.

Those campus protests by Hamas collaborators in the US and the West? The chants of “by any means necessary”? The diplomatic recognition of a “Palestinian State” by some nations? One supposes they would have preferred an Israeli response of conducting mass funerals and collective grieving. Sorry, guys. You must be thinking of some other ethnicity.

Embedded in the DNA of every Jew is the recognition that they are – essentially – on their own. As Nazi Germany launched its machinery for the Holocaust, contemporary media reports and agents on the ground were quite clear about what was taking place. Nations were either studiously indifferent or else clasped their hands in feigned anguish… “Oh the humanity…” as the gas chambers and dedicated death squads worked overtime.

Now the world is on notice. Gaza will serve as a reminder that if anyone seeks to defile or destroy the people of Israel, the response will be unrelenting. They will find you wherever you are and inflict on you and your land pain of Biblical proportions, the same as you had been planning to inflict on them.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

The EU Is Enabling Religious Persecution in Pakistan by Uzay Bulut
October 13, 2025

Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists – even transnationally. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union’s special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP+).
Journalists in Pakistan (and even the family members of exiled journalists) are subject to enforced disappearances. Journalist Asif Karim Khehtran and the brothers of U.S.-based exiled Pakistani journalist Ahmad Noorani were abducted in March 2025 and remain missing.
A 2025 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom documented that more than 700 individuals in 2025 were imprisoned on charges of “blasphemy.” This figure represented a 300% increase from the previous year.
These acts are not isolated incidents but part of a broader campaign of religious “cleansing,” driven by radical Islamist groups such as the TLP and facilitated by a legal system that criminalizes Ahmadi identity.
Pakistan’s fierce blasphemy laws continue to target religious minorities. The HRCP report documents that increasingly, minority individuals accused of blasphemy are lynched by mobs or murdered while seeking police protection…. The rise in hate speech, threats against judicial figures, and the politicization of bar associations only propel a dangerous tilt toward Islamic radicalism within state institutions.
The police appear more interested in appeasing local Islamic strongmen and keeping things calm than in implementing the law and protecting minorities.
The European Union should stand for the principles and ideals on which its Generalized System of Preferences was based. At present, it is simply furthering intolerable behavior and embarrassing itself.

Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union’s special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences. Pictured: The EU’s then High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini and Pakistan’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi, give a press conference after signing the EU-Pakistan Strategic Engagement Plan in Brussels, on June 25, 2019. (Photo by Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images)

Pakistan is engulfed in a deepening crisis of religious intolerance and systemic persecution. This year has witnessed a disturbing surge of violence, discrimination and institutional complicity. Christian, Ahmadiyya and Hindu communities have particularly been targeted.

Despite repeated calls for reform and international condemnation, Pakistan’s failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens has left a trail of shattered lives, desecrated places of worship, and a society increasingly fractured by hate.

Pakistan has for years been seriously repressing its minorities, political dissidents, human right advocates and journalists – even transnationally. Nevertheless, Pakistan continues to enjoy the benefits of the European Union’s special incentive arrangement under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP+).

The contradiction was highlighted once again at the United Nations.

As a part of the ongoing 60th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the international NGO CAP Freedom of Conscience collaborated with the news outlet EU Today through a side event on October 1. This event called upon the EU to review Pakistan’s GSP+ status in light of its long-term state-sanctioned human rights violations.

A documentary on the subject, which included statements from multiple Members of European Parliament, was also screened at the event. The organizers were evidently hoping to generate awareness about Pakistan’s ongoing human rights crisis. As a result of the UNHRC’s session, several EU lawmakers and European Commission members were in attendance.

Earlier, on September 30, Baloch human rights defender Joshua George Bowes had raised urgent concerns about Pakistan’s failure to uphold its international human rights obligations while continuing to benefit from the EU’s GSP+ trade status.

Citing the International Federation of Journalists’ South Asia Press Freedom Report 2024–25, Bowes highlighted that Pakistani journalists faced 34 serious press freedom violations. Those included seven targeted killings and eight non-fatal attacks, placing Pakistan at 158th on the World Press Freedom Index.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, between 1992 and 2025, at least 68 journalists were murdered in Pakistan. One recent example is the murder of Imtiaz Mir, a journalist who was shot to death in Karachi last month. Mir, an anchorperson for TV channel Metro 1 News, was heading home in a car driven by his older brother when six suspects riding two motorcycles fired on their vehicle.

On October 2, police in Islamabad stormed the National Press Club. attacking several journalists. Footage shared on social media and by press outlets showed police manhandling, pushing and shoving journalists inside the club.

Violent attacks are part of the wider siege that Pakistani journalists are under. Journalists across Pakistan are increasingly facing crackdowns, enforced disappearances, travel bans, frozen bank accounts, job dismissals, and exile for challenging the country’s entrenched power structures. Journalist and television anchor Samina Pasha, for instance, said her bank account was frozen on the orders of Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). She called it part of an escalating effort to silence independent journalists.

Journalists in Pakistan (and even the family members of exiled journalists) are subject to enforced disappearances. Journalist Asif Karim Khehtran and the brothers of U.S.-based exiled Pakistani journalist Ahmad Noorani were abducted in March 2025 and remain missing.

Journalists’ YouTube channels are also being targeted on a massive scale. On July 8, at the request of the NCCIA, an Islamabad court ordered 27 YouTube channels to be blocked under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, accusing them of spreading “anti-Pakistan” content.

Bowes also drew attention to a 2025 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which documented that more than 700 individuals in 2025 were imprisoned on charges of “blasphemy.” This figure represented a 300% increase from the previous year.

He further referenced human rights monitoring by the Baloch National Movement’s human rights department, Paank, which documented 785 enforced disappearances and 121 extrajudicial killings in the first half of 2025 alone. Paank made a direct appeal to the European Council:

“The European Union is Pakistan’s largest trading partner. Continued trade privileges under GSP+ must be linked to real human rights progress, not empty promises.”

Similarly, the Pashtun National Jirga reported last month that more than 4,000 Pashtuns are missing.

The brutal murder of Laeeq Cheema on April 18 stands as a grim symbol of this crisis. Cheema was a 47-year-old member of Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community who was beaten to death by a Sunni Muslim mob outside an Ahmadi place of worship in Karachi’s Saddar neighborhood. The crowd, reportedly composed of supporters of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), stormed the narrow streets. They shouted anti-Ahmadi slogans and accused the community of violating Pakistan’s vicious anti-Ahmadi laws. Despite police intervention, the mob swelled to more than 600 people. Cheema’s death is simply yet another entry in the long ledger of violence against Pakistan’s Ahmadi religious minority.

In another attack, Dr. Sheikh Mahmood, a prominent Ahmadi gastroenterologist and hepatologist, was shot dead in Sargodha, Punjab on May 16, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported. According to initial reports, Mahmood, a highly respected doctor, arrived at Fatima Hospital at around 2.30pm to attend to his patients, as was his routine. While walking through the hospital corridor, an unidentified man who had been lying in wait shot him from behind, killing him. The murderer, openly brandishing a pistol, fled the scene.

The Ahmadiyya community (which numbers around 500,000 in Pakistan and nearly 10 million globally) has long been subjected to systemic discrimination. Though Ahmadis consider themselves Muslim and share nearly identical beliefs with mainstream Islam, a 1974 amendment to Pakistan’s constitution nevertheless declares them non-Muslims. A 1984 ordinance criminalized many of their religious practices.

This legal framework only emboldened extremist groups and legitimized persecution. The Ahmadis live in fear, often hiding their identities, avoiding public worship, and facing desecration of their graves and places of worship. On May 10, at least 90 Ahmadi Muslim gravestones were desecrated in Punjab Province. The gravestones were smashed and defaced, with debris scattered across the cemetery grounds. According to the Department of External Affairs of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK, 269 Ahmadi Muslim graves have been vandalized during 11 separate attacks in 2025 alone, and in 2024, 319 gravestones were defiled in 21 incidents.

These acts are not isolated incidents but part of a broader campaign of religious “cleansing,” driven by radical Islamist groups such as the TLP and facilitated by a legal system that criminalizes Ahmadi identity.

The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan has also intensified. On September 17, 2024, the Hindu Rama Pir Temple in Sindh province was attacked by armed terrorists who indiscriminately fired at worshippers, wounding four people. Such attacks on Hindu places of worship are alarmingly frequent. The climate of impunity only encourages deep-seated hostility toward religious minorities.

Forced conversions and underage marriages of Hindu and Christian girls have also surged. Each year in Pakistan, more than 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls, typically between 12 and 25 years, are kidnapped, forced to convert, and married off to Muslim men. Women and children from religious minorities are at high risk of kidnapping, forced conversion and forced marriage. Forced conversion to Islam is not illegal in Pakistan. The authorities rarely take any meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice, and the police are often refuse to file complaints submitted by the victims or their families.

In addition, human trafficking of girls and women along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a massive problem. A report by the Brookings Institution states:

“Offsetting this was the fact that many of the victims belonged to the Christian community of Pakistan — less surrounded by society’s notions of honor, and less protected because they are marginalized…. That most of the victims belonged to the poor and marginalized Christian community of Pakistan sadly made it easier for Pakistan to divert attention away from the issue without an ensuing public outcry.”

As noted in a 2020 report by the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development, ideologically targeted sexual abuse is directed specifically at religious minorities, both for sexual predation but also as a “conquest” to win the girl over to Islam.

The strong influence of Pakistan’s Islamic religious landscape is particularly discriminatory towards women and girls of minority religions. Those minorities in Pakistan endure economic and social marginalization. They are often relegated to menial jobs, denied access to education and government services, and excluded from political representation. In rural areas, land-grabs targeting minority communities are common, with little legal recourse. Women from these communities face compounded discrimination. Literacy rates are significantly lower than both the national average and those of men within their own communities.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has repeatedly raised alarms over the deteriorating state of religious freedom in the country and called for the release of those jailed under Section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, a provision that criminalizes Ahmadis for identifying as Muslim or preaching their faith. The HRCP’s report, “Streets of Fear: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2024/25,” details mob-led violence and extrajudicial killings.

Pakistan’s fierce blasphemy laws continue to target religious minorities. The HRCP report documents that increasingly, minority individuals accused of blasphemy are lynched by mobs or murdered while seeking police protection. In two separate cases, individuals were extrajudicially executed by law enforcement, highlighting the urgent need for reform within Pakistan’s policing and judicial systems. The rise in hate speech, threats against judicial figures, and the politicization of bar associations only propel a dangerous tilt toward Islamic radicalism within state institutions.

The Jaranwala incident, in which Muslims destroyed at least 24 churches and forcibly displaced hundreds of Christians in August 2023, is just one illustration of violence resulting from the blasphemy laws. Using the blasphemy law to target Christians, Hindus, and Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadis, keeps increasing.

Christians are victims of roughly a quarter of all blasphemy accusations despite being less than 2% of the population. Muslim business rivals accuse Christian men of blasphemy as a means of destroying their business and reputation. Additionally, Christians, Hindus and people from other minority communities typically occupy lower-status jobs and have been referred to as “chura”, a derogatory word meaning “filthy,” reserved for road sweepers and sewage cleaners.

Christians in Pakistan suffer from the volatile security situation, the high level of violence and the lack of effective channels for seeking protection. The police appear more interested in appeasing local Islamic strongmen and keeping things calm than in implementing the law and protecting minorities.

Last October, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif acknowledged the gravity of the situation during a Diwali celebration in Lahore. She urged citizens to recognize the collective responsibility of protecting minorities and emphasized that respect for religious diversity is fundamental to Pakistan’s integrity. Such statements are praiseworthy but rare. Without concrete policy action and accountability, they remain toothless and insufficient.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has officially been a Muslim state since its independence in 1947. The country’s demographic composition underscores the painful condition of its minorities. With a population of approximately 251.9 million, Muslims constitute 97%. Hindus and Christians each make up just 1.6%. Ahmadis make up a mere 0.2%. These communities are too small to pose any threat to the majority, yet they face unrelenting persecution. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are among the harshest in the world. They prescribe a mandatory death sentence for insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and prison terms for Ahmadis who “pose as Muslims.” These laws often become weapons with which to settle personal scores and incite communal violence.

According to the human rights organization Open Doors, all Christians in Pakistan suffer from institutionalized discrimination. Occupations seen as low and dirty are reserved for Christians by the authorities, as can be seen in job advertisements. Many Christians are poor and are victims of bonded labor, through which they are either forced to convert to Islam or are given in child marriage by their employers. Christian girls in bonded labor situations are more vulnerable to being illegally detained by their employers.

Open Doors notes:

“Pakistan is home to dozens of radical Islamic groups. Increasingly, advisory bodies to the government are completely made up of Islamic scholars who influence the laws. Thousands of madrassas are being run without government scrutiny of how they are funded or what they are teaching. Anyone calling for reform of blasphemy laws is openly threatened by radicals who believe “infidels” deserve death. Banned radical groups often do not dissolve but rebrand, go online or merge with an existing group. Religious sentiments and resulting mob violence are easily stirred up and are targeted against religious minorities, especially Christians, as showcased in the August 2023 violence in Jaranwala. Pakistan suffers from ethnic fragmentation. Balochistan Province and the central Sindh regions are considered beyond the reach of the state authorities. Religious minorities are seen as impure, both for religious reasons and because they do not belong to the ruling ethnic groups.”

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington DC-based think tank, has also documented the devastating impact of blasphemy allegations and mob violence on Pakistan’s religious minorities. Its report highlights the surge in attacks on Christians in Punjab during 2023 and 2024, and this year’s continued targeting of Ahmadis. According to the organization, the Ahmadi community endured six faith-based murders in 2024 and three more in the first half of 2025. This pattern of violence is both persistent and escalating.

The international community has increasingly voiced concern over Pakistan’s failure to protect its minorities. The United Nations and several countries have criticized the government’s inaction and called for urgent reforms. Meaningful change, however, is nowhere in sight. The HRCP has urged the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry based on findings from the National Commission for Human Rights, particularly regarding entrapment in blasphemy cases. Such a commission could be a vital step toward justice, but only if it operates independently and is empowered to hold perpetrators accountable.

The Pakistani state’s complicity in the sustained persecution of Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis, Shia Muslims, and Sikhs in Pakistan, as well as critical journalists, whether through silence, legal endorsement, or active participation, needs to be seriously confronted.

The machinery of religious persecution has become lethal, with discriminatory laws and unchecked hate crimes turning faith into a fatal liability. The urgency to act is no longer a matter of principle; it is, for religious minorities, a matter of survival. Reform in Pakistan needs to start by immediately repealing the laws that criminalize belief; by prosecuting those who incite and execute violence, and by giving full protection to equal rights for every citizen, regardless of religion. Minority communities are being hunted, erased and buried under the weight of institutionalized hate.

The European Union should stand for the principles and ideals on which its Generalized System of Preferences was based. At present, it is simply furthering intolerable behavior and embarrassing itself.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Returning the Israeli hostages is not nearly enough. JOSHUA HOFFMAN

Returning the Israeli hostages without destroying Hamas is like treating cancer with painkillers.

OCT 12, 2025

Roei Shalev survived on October 7, 2023.

He survived being shot in the back at the Nova music festival, survived watching terrorists kill his partner Mapal Adam and his close friend Hili Solomon, survived the days and months afterward when grief and shock folded in on themselves and never quite unwrapped.

Two weeks after the massacre his mother, Raffaela, also took her own life. Two years later, in a farewell post that read like the transcript of a wound that could not close, Shalev wrote that he was “burning” and “already dead” on the inside. This past Friday, he was found in a burning car on a highway exit in Israel. He committed suicide.

His death, one more in a pattern of survivors tormented beyond the moment of the attack, was met with the same helplessness that has shadowed this war: sorrow, organized aid, speeches, condolences, headlines, and then the knowledge that none of that stitches up the people whose lives were shattered in ways that do not obey anniversaries or diplomatic milestones.

Every returned hostage matters. Each freed person is a child of someone, a parent, a friend, a life halted and then, one hopes, resumed. Their release is a moral imperative, a human triumph in the face of barbarity.

But to stop at the exchange table, to treat the returning of hostages as the end of the ledger, is to mistake one act of mercy for the whole duty of justice and prevention. The image of a family reunited is necessary and vital; it is not sufficient. Heroic though rescue and negotiation may be, they cannot undo the strategic fact that the tactics which produced those hostages — indiscriminate slaughter, sexual violence, kidnapping, the deliberate weaponization of civilians — remain a template if not obliterated.

The question a grieving country must ask is blunt: Will the civilized world take measures that make it impossible for Hamas to ever again be a model for terror, or will the horror be preserved in memory only, a precedent rather than a warning?

For survivors like Nova festival attendees, the violence did not end when they walked out of the desert, or when a prisoner was brought home. PTSD does not respect ceasefires. The country has watched a cascade of mental-health crises, with survivors repeatedly and publicly describing unrelenting trauma, and with accounts of suicides and near-suicides among the young people who saw what happened there.

Members of civil society and clinicians have warned for months that this is a national mental-health emergency that requires continuous resourcing: long-term professional care, stable funding, outreach that finds people who can’t ask for help, and a social consensus that the living wounds need more than a press conference. To celebrate a hostage’s return while letting the structures that permit devastation remain intact is to celebrate a rescue and ignore a recurrence.

There is a security dimension and a moral-political dimension to making sure “never again” does not become a rhetorical echo. Security demands dismantling the operational capacity of the group that perpetrated the slaughter. That means more than symbolic strikes or ephemeral sanctions; it means sustained international cooperation that removes the command-and-control, the logistics, the safe havens, the financing, and the political cover that allow terror groups to project force and to recruit. It means denying them the prestige that comes from successful, attention-grabbing atrocities.

If Hamas’ tactics are left unpunished in meaningful ways, then those tactics — the mass massacre, the rout of civilian protections, the spectacle of kidnapping and atrocity streamed as propaganda — will be taught to other groups as a playbook for impact and notoriety. The international community cannot be neutral about the mechanics of evil without becoming an unwitting teacher. This is not vengeance for vengeance’s sake; it is prevention.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, aircraft hijackings involving Palestinian militant groups were a notable tactic used in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In September 1970, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airliners bound for New York City and one for London. Three aircraft were forced to land at Dawson’s Field, a remote desert airstrip near Zarqa, Jordan, formerly Royal Air Force Station Zarqa, which then became the “Revolutionary Airport” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight departed from Tel Aviv, carrying 246 mainly Jewish and Israeli passengers and a crew of 12. The plane flew to Athens, where it picked up an additional 58 passengers, including four hijackers. Just after takeoff, the flight was hijacked by two Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, ending in the dramatic Israeli rescue at Entebbe. The world applauded Israel’s courage, but it did not punish the perpetrators, their sponsors, or the ideology behind them.

That was the beginning of the problem. The Palestinians’ use of civilian airliners as political weapons went largely unpunished and even glamorized in some corners of the world. Hijackings became the fashionable face of “resistance.” What began as a Palestinian tactic became an international language of terror — copied by revolutionaries, Islamists, and anti-Western extremists everywhere.

The lesson was clear to those watching: Terrorism works. The hijackers didn’t need to win wars; they just needed to hijack the world’s fear. That logic, perfected by Palestinian terror groups, metastasized over decades until September 11, 2001, when Al-Qaeda took the same playbook and turned airplanes into missiles. The Palestinian hijackings of the 1970s were not just crimes against Israelis or Jews; they were the prototype for global terror. The world’s failure to condemn and dismantle that culture of violence allowed the same psychological weapon to evolve.

If the deliberate targeting of civilians is rewarded by influence or by amplification, it will be imitated. If it is exposed, isolated, and erased as an instrument of policy, it can be made unusable as a model. The choice is not abstract. It is measured in dead children, in the lives that spiral into chronic despair, in communities that never recover.

That moral-political posture requires courage from democratic states because it will force uncomfortable questions about alliances, enforcement, and the limits of realpolitik. It will demand coordinated pressure on states and non-state actors that enable terror, such as closing financial pipelines, policing arms transfers, cracking down on networks of support, and refusing diplomatic imprimaturs that grant legitimacy.

It will also mean rebuilding the intelligence and defense architectures that prevent similar infiltrations: better early-warning systems, more robust defense of soft targets, rapid-reaction capabilities that are not purely reactive, and intelligence-sharing that treats mass-casualty scenarios as something the international system must anticipate and forestall. These are technical measures; they are not incompatible with moral clarity.

In fact, they are an expression of it. To provide care and to prosecute crimes, to welcome hostages home and to also remove the conditions that produced those hostages, are complementary obligations: One heals the individual, the other protects the many.

The demand that Hamas be made an example of, that its model be invalidated, often sounds like a call for punitive overreach. That is a misread. Making a group an example to future terrorists does not require cruelty or the erosion of the rule of law; it requires the meticulous application of law, of international cooperation, and of deterrent force that is both proportionate and effective. It requires a legal architecture that holds leaders and logisticians to account, that chokes off material support, that severs the media stage on which their crimes are glorified.

The aim is not to replicate brutality, but to make brutality an instrument that fails strategically. A robust, rights-respecting international response that destroys the business model of terror is not only ethical; it is strategic. It saves lives.

There is an important domestic piece of the work, too. A nation that sees its citizens returned home must not mistake the hostage’s freed body for a healed society. The grief that follows a massacre, and the slow attrition of hope that can culminate in a man burning himself on a highway, are smoking signs of structural neglect.

Long-term funding for mental-health services must be nonpolitical and noncontingent; trauma-informed care must be woven into schools, hospitals, and community centers; social safety nets must be stabilized for families whose breadwinners and anchors were taken or destroyed; memorialization must be paired with active, living support systems that track outcomes and intervene early. Public rhetoric matters: to survivors, phrases like “we will not let them win” ring hollow if the state cannot keep its promises to care for the living. To the world, rhetoric alone is a poor substitute for the durable, tangible investments that reduce suffering and prevent further casualties of war and terror.

Finally, consider the moral calculus for the free world. Returning hostages is an explicit ethical obligation; it is a restitution that cannot be delayed and must be carried out when possible.

But, if the international community allows the apparatus that created the hostages to remain intact, it will have performed a limited justice: one that restores a person to family but leaves the mechanism of harm untouched. That limited justice will then be studied by would-be killers as a viable channel to publicity, bargaining power, and effect. The alternative is to combine the tactical, emotional act of release with a strategy that eliminates the strategic utility of atrocity. This means justice in the fullest sense: rescue for the individual and incapacitation for the model of terror.

Roei Shalev’s life story, and the lives of others like him, demand that we think not only in terms of single acts of rescue but of long arcs of protection. We must ask ourselves whether our response honors the depth of their suffering. Will we invest in healing and structural prevention, or will we applaud hostage returns and then let the currents that produced them run on?

Returning the hostages is a necessary chapter in the moral ledger; it is not the entire book. To keep writing that book as if the last page is the only page is to consign future generations to reread tragedies we might have finally prevented.

If the international community is serious about preserving humanity, about ensuring that barbaric tactics cannot be used as lessons for others, then it must turn the moral urgency that frees hostages into lasting policies that make the criminal method impossible to replicate.

Anything less is a partial mercy; a full duty remains.

Don’t Say What Israel Should Have Done Differently CHANANYA WEISSMAN

An uncomfortable discussion we need to have

OCT 12, 2025

This week we start a new annual Torah cycle with Bereishis. Maybe this time around we will pay better attention and internalize the most basic, fundamental lessons.

Or we can double down again on the same failed ideologies, keep doing the same things, and expect better results. Your choice.

After Adam and Chava ate from the forbidden fruit and tried to hide from Hashem’s presence (which never works) Hashem challenged them. “Did you eat from the tree which I commanded you not to eat from?”

Of course, Hashem knew the answer to this question, and Adam and Chava knew that He knew. Chazal explain that Hashem in His mercy was giving them an opening to take responsibility for their sin and do teshuva, in which case they could have avoided the full brunt of the punishment, and the entire course of history would have been changed for the better.

Instead of taking responsibility, Adam blamed Chava for giving him the fruit, even brazenly noting that Hashem had given Chava to him as a companion in the first place. Not my fault!

Adam did have a point. He wouldn’t have eaten the fruit had Chava not given it to him (and, as the Midrash teaches, wailed and nagged until he relented). Indeed, Chava was punished for her role in causing Adam to sin.

Chava in turn blamed the snake for persuading her to eat the fruit. She too had a point. She would never have taken the fruit if not for the snake’s clever ploys to wear down her better judgment. Indeed, the snake was punished for instigating everything.

However, despite the fact that Adam and Chava both had a point, shifting the blame didn’t earn them clemency; it sealed their fate. Although others had influenced and even pressured them to sin, ultimately it was their decision to eat from the fruit, and they were responsible for the consequences of their own actions.

As if this sort of thing hasn’t happened countless times already, the Jewish world is spilling endless digital ink over the “hostage deal”.

By the way, did you stop to consider who decided it should be called that, and why? Why didn’t they call it the “letting loose an army of terrorists deal”, or just the “terrorist deal” for short?

When I bring this to your attention the answer is obvious, but the fact that I need to bring it to your attention underscores how subtle and sophisticated the brainwashing is — even and especially from media outlets you still believe are somewhat working for you and not for them.

In any case, this “deal” is hardly what you would have accepted in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, nor was this the promised reward after all those “painful sacrifices” you were asked to make. You were promised a resounding victory. You were promised the complete and utter defeat of Hamas. You were promised that the IDF would rescue the hostages, or at least bring Hamas to its knees until they cried uncle and begged you to take the hostages back for nothing.

The sales pitch was not that after two years of extremely painful Molech sacrifices, state leaders, the IDF, and their media mouthpieces would celebrate the return 20 living hostages and 28 dead bodies in exchange for over 2000 genocidal terrorists, tons of supplies, American control over territory you paid so dearly to conquer, a cynical peace prize for Donald Trump, and then have the chutzpah to call it a victory.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact. For all the propaganda about the IDF fighting for the hostages, in nearly two years of operations in Gaza they rescued exactly zero hostages.

The spin doctors will claim that the IDF had to operate carefully to avoid killing hostages, and it’s only because of their resounding victory over Hamas that this incredible terrorist release deal could be made. Best deal in town. Couldn’t have happened any other way. Even Bibi said that anyone who claims otherwise is going against the truth.

We’re supposed to believe the IDF surgically operated so they wouldn’t accidentally kill the hostages, and neither would Hamas, but somehow, after nearly 20,000 IDF soldiers were maimed and killed, and many of the rest were broken mentally and financially, Hamas is desperate enough to exchange 20 hostages for 2000 of their finest killers.

That, and because Lord Trump spoke and it was so.

Are you buying that?

Here’s another uncomfortable fact. In addition to rescuing exactly zero hostages, when the IDF had their best known chance to rescue hostages, three to be exact, they inexplicably shot them dead instead:

On 15 December 2023, three Israeli hostages were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the Battle of Shuja’iyya in the Gaza Strip. The men had emerged from a building and were approaching a group of IDF soldiers when they were shot dead, in spite of the fact that they were shirtless and visibly unarmed while waving a makeshift white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew.

So let’s recap. IDF brass threatened soldiers who warned them about an impending invasion, allowed one of the most fortified borders in the world to be conquered with a bulldozer, pickup trucks, and a donkey, ordered soldiers to stand down for 8+ hours, while hordes of executioners leisurely hunted down Jews, took selfies, and sat down for meals, and children and old men with canes had time to loot their communities, then jailed soldiers who defied orders and rushed to defend Jewish communities…

After that totally understandable and forgivable “intelligence failure”, for which no one was prosecuted for reckless manslaughter, let alone treason, the IDF proceeded over the next two years to destroy many thousands of Jewish soldiers physically, mentally, spiritually, and financially, ostensibly for the sake of saving the very hostages they allowed to be taken, and comes away with a final score of zero hostages saved and three executed in cold blood.

Then the IDF “forced” Hamas to accept a deal as bad as winning the lottery three times in a row, then declared victory

I guess that settles it.

The media dutifully broadcast this message without the slightest hint of a smirk. See here.

So while the propaganda machine is busy making sure you focus strictly on the return of a few hostages, crown Trump as your lord and savior, and celebrate the very people who brought this destruction upon you, their mercenaries in Gaza (and Israel proper) are planning the next October 7, while the Erev Rav are planning the next intelligence failure.

Here’s the thing. It’s easy to blame “Israel” for once again capitulating to our external enemies, bowing to American pressure, and making senselessly lopsided deals. It’s easy to lecture “Israel” on what they should do and should have done. Many “right wing” and “religious Zionists” are once again playing that predictable game.

They’re making a terrible mistake.

They should blame themselves and everyone like them.

If, in the aftermath of October 7, you admonished people that “now is not the time to ask questions”, you should blame yourself. If you insisted that we must let the most incompetent “intelligence failures” in history send our loved ones into “war”, and only afterward ask questions, you need to face some uncomfortable questions, too. You share responsibility for all the soldiers who were maimed and killed for nothing. (By the way, can we ask questions yet, or is it conveniently irrelevant now?)

Based on official reports, the overwhelming majority were killed in death traps they never should have entered, ambushes they never should have been exposed to, friendly fire incidents, and truly bizarre accidents. The state and their media mouthpieces cycnially referred to all the above as “dying in combat”. I documented it here.

You didn’t let that deter you or even give you pause. You demanded more. You share the blame.

If you allowed yourself to be deluded that this pretextual “war” was a milchemes mitzvah, or you otherwise cheered for it and demanded more of it, you share the blame.

If you lionized the soldiers who died senseless deaths for nothing as heroes who died al Kiddush Hashem, thereby encouraging more to follow suit, you will have to answer for that.

If you gave them chizuk to keep going back for more, when otherwise they might have gotten hungry, and fed up, and refused to run into that booby-trapped building to “search for a tunnel” or whatever, and told their soulless commanders where to shove their uniforms, you might as well have played music for the Jews who went into the crematoria.

None of this absolves the snakes. They will get what is coming to them in full measure, God willing very soon. But just like Adam and Chava were remiss in shifting the blame for their own decisions and actions to others, those who supported our enemies from within should spend less time blaming them, and take responsibility for their own mistakes.

If you’re still supporting the very people and institutions that sold you out over and over and over again, you have forfeited the right to be shocked and complain when they sell you out…again. You allowed them to do it. You helped them do it.

How many times does Lucy need to pull the football away from Charlie Brown before he should stop blaming her and start blaming himself? This is what she does. If you keep going back for more, it’s on you.

How many times do the Erev Rav and their un-Jewish army need to show their true colors, their absolute contempt for you, before you stop cheerleading for them and inviting them to abuse you even more? This is what they do. If you keep going back for more, it’s on you.

Don’t tell me what Israel should have done differently. Tell me what you should have done differently.

And then start doing it.

If there were actually two sides in this “war”, and I were Hamas, I would insist that haredi draft dodgers be released from prison in any deal, just to see if Israel blinks.

I saw this billboard today by the entrance to Jerusalem. This creepy message is sponsored by an extremely wealthy, extremely Christian organization operating in the heart of Jerusalem.

Cyrus was no tzaddik, Trump is no savior, and these messianic Christians are no friends of the Jewish people.

Arutz Sheva, which some people still believe is a trusted bastion of right wing religious Zionist news and views, and not a controlled opposition mouthpiece for state propaganda, is busy celebrating Bibi, Trump, the IDF’s incredible “victory”, and the (presumed) impending return of the hostages.

They are not outraged by the terrorist surrender deal. They are outraged that people in Tel Aviv booed Netanyahu. In front of American dignitaries, no less!

Meanwhile, Michael Mordechai Nachmani was killed while the IDF was surrendering territory our slave soldiers would have been better off not entering in the first place. Although the media generally frames it that he died “in combat” or “while fighting” or “during operations”, he was picked off by a sniper while withdrawing.

The media also dutifully emphasized that Nachmani was killed right before the ceasefire went into effect, as if that somehow makes it okay.

Who knows? If he was killed just after it went into effect, they’d have every reason to lie about it, because right now we really need to be gushing over the hostages, and Trump, and the IDF’s smashing success, and not being sticklers over when another precious Jew was killed for no reason.

The more the controlled media emphasizes something, the less I believe it. That should be our relationship with pathological liars, even if they occasionally tell the truth.

Either way, his death, like so many others, was not a kiddush Hashem.

The folly of releasing Hamas terrorists for peace BY Tom Gross

12 October 2025 The Spectator
Sorry to spoil the party, but there’s one aspect of this week’s Middle East peace deal which is pure madness.

As part of the US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, Israel is set to free 250 Palestinian terrorists serving lengthy prison sentences for murder and other serious offences. Many of them have boasted of their crimes and said they would happily carry them out again. (Up to 1,700 Hamas fighters captured during the current war are also set to be freed, but may be worth releasing if this deal brings an end to the conflict.)

This kind of terrible deal-making will surely only encourage the future kidnapping of other innocent people by terrorists in order to secure the release of other murderers

Israelis can be brilliant at many things. But sometimes they get it very wrong. From the outset, it has been foolish for Israeli negotiators (and later President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff) to even entertain the idea that they will release convicted mass murderers and suicide bomb planners in exchange for innocent Israeli kidnap victims.

To take one example: Mahmoud Qawasmeh, a 45-year-old senior Hamas member who was previously released during the lopsided 2011 Gilad Shalit terrorist-for-hostage exchange. He then went on to orchestrate the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, for which he was re-arrested only last year in March. He is due to be released under the new Trump plan.

What are the bets that in future Qawasmeh will go on to murder again and be arrested a third time (probably after hiding in some UN-affiliated hospital) and then released yet again in some future lopsided hostages for terrorists deal?

Another terrorist slated to be released this week is Imad Qawasmeh, currently serving 16 life sentences for organising a double suicide bus bombing in which 16 Israelis were killed and over 100 injured in 2004 in the southern city of Beersheba. Among the victims was a three-and-a-half-year-old boy killed while sitting on his mother’s lap. (Twenty-thousand Hamas supporters in Gaza took to the streets to celebrate that attack the next day, according to Reuters.)

Then there is Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, a 25-year-old Palestinian convicted of stabbing to death ith a kitchen knife Daphna Meir, a 39-year-old Israeli mother of six. After the murder, he allegedly returned home to calmly watch a film with his family.

Next up is Hilmi Abdul Karim Muhammad Hammash: sentenced for coordinating a Jerusalem suicide bus bombing in 2004 that killed 11 Israelis and wounded 50 others.

It is not just terrorists from Hamas who are set to be freed. Iyad Abu al-Rub, a terrorist from the even more radical Islamic Jihad group, who was convicted of orchestrating a series of deadly suicide bombings in Israel that killed 13 people between 2003 and 2005, is to be released. The suicide bombs he planned included one at a dance club in Tel Aviv, another at a shopping mall in Netanya, and a third at an outdoor food market in Hadera, north of Tel Aviv.

Of course, I want the hostages held in Gaza to be released. But this kind of terrible deal-making will surely only encourage the future kidnapping of other innocent people by terrorists in order to secure the release of other murderers.

I wrote almost the exact same sentence in 2011 when I criticised the Gilad Shalit deal that, among others, freed Yahya Sinwar, who went on to become the architect of the October 7 massacre. I want peace as much as anybody but releasing murderers for innocent kidnap victims in the absence of a proper commitment to peace by Hamas is not the way to get there.

As soon as the hostages have been released tomorrow, world leaders including Keir Starmer will gather in Cairo under President Trump’s auspices. They must tell Hamas’s backers Qatar and Turkey that Hamas should be happy with peace and prosperity for its own sake and not be rewarded with the freeing of mass murderers. Once the hostages are released it is still not too late for the prisoners to be kept in jail to serve out their sentences after all.

Hamas Agrees To Release ALL Hostages In Deal, But Gaza Endgame Left Unclear [1:04:10] Yishai Fleisher

Oct 9, 2025 – Yishai live on Trump’s Gaza End Game and Hostage Release – will Hamas take a break to attack again or be defeated? Is regional peace breaking out. General (R) Avivi and MK Simcha Rothman join Yishai to cover all the breaking news and provide in-depth analysis.

A Salute to the Men and Women Who Keep Israel Alive JOSHUA HOFFMAN

In the IDF, we see the Jewish story itself — because, when Israelis fight, they fight for life.

OCT 11, 2025

In the two years since October 7, 2023, Israel has lived through one of the most painful and heroic chapters in its history.

The seven-front war with Hamas and its allies has tested not only the strength of the Israel Defense Forces, but the very soul of the nation. Every inch of Israel’s security, every ounce of its resilience, has been carried on the shoulders of men and women in uniform — soldiers who left their families, their careers, their daily routines, and their comforts to defend their homeland.

Israel’s toll in this war stands at 472 fallen heroes, among them two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors. But behind that number are thousands more who carry wounds, seen and unseen. There are parents who buried their children, children who will grow up without parents, and a nation forever changed by the sacrifices made in the defense of life itself. Each of those 472 names is a universe. Each was someone’s son, daughter, sibling, or best friend. Each represented the unbreakable link between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

When the call went out for reservists in the immediate days that followed October 7th, hundreds of thousands answered. They came from every corner of Israeli life — engineers, artists, doctors, teachers, startup founders, musicians, and students. Some were abroad and dropped everything to fly home. Others packed their bags in the middle of family dinners or business meetings and kissed their loved ones goodbye without knowing when, or if, they’d return. They left behind newborns, elderly parents, companies they’d built, dreams they’d been chasing. And they did it without hesitation. Because, in Israel, the army is not just an institution; it’s part of the family.

Many of my own friends were called into reserves. Men and women I shared Shabbat dinners with, people whose weddings I danced at, whose children I played with, who laughed with me over a beer — suddenly they were back in uniform, carrying weapons instead of laptops, sleeping in army base beds instead of their own.

It is impossible to describe to an outsider what that feels like. The helplessness. The waiting. The constant checking of the news, multiple times a day, holding your breath as new photos of fallen soldiers appear, hoping you don’t see a familiar face. In Israel, every casualty announcement feels personal, because it almost always is. The distance between “a soldier fell” and “someone I know fell” is heartbreakingly thin.

And behind those soldiers stood mothers — mothers whose hearts broke twice. Once when they sent their children into the army the first time, and again when they watched them go back years later, as reservists, now husbands and fathers themselves. These mothers, who raised their sons and daughters through sirens and fears, found themselves reliving the same anguish all over again. They packed their children’s bags, kissed their grandchildren goodbye, and stood at the doorway with trembling hands and tearful eyes, praying for the strength to let go once more.

Their courage is quiet but immense, the courage of women who have carried generations of Jewish history on their backs, who have lived through the unthinkable and yet still believe in tomorrow. It is the unique anguish and strength of the Israeli mother: to know the cost of life in Israel and still choose to give life to it.

But the IDF does not fight alone. Behind every soldier stands a nation that mobilized as one. Parents turned their homes into logistics hubs; volunteers packed meals and collected supplies; schoolchildren wrote letters to soldiers they’d never met. The lines between the front and the home front blurred — because, in Israel, there is no such thing as “someone else’s war.” When the army goes to battle, the nation goes with it.

That sense of collective duty, and collective vulnerability, is the DNA of the IDF. It’s what makes it different from any other army in the world. The IDF was born not to conquer, but to defend a people who had known statelessness and vulnerability for 2,000 years. Every soldier carries that memory, whether consciously or not.

The IDF’s ethos is built on three pillars: courage, responsibility, and solidarity. Courage not only to fight, but to make moral choices in the fog of war. Responsibility not only to defend the nation, but to safeguard its humanity. Solidarity not only with comrades-in-arms, but with the entire people of Israel. Every citizen, every community, every child.

And that solidarity extends far beyond Jews. The IDF is not just a “Jewish army”; it is the army of Israel. Serving within its ranks are Jews, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, and Muslims. Shoulder to shoulder, they defend the same land, the same skies, the same people. Christian and Muslim Arabs serve in combat units, Bedouin trackers risk their lives hunting terrorists in the desert, Druze officers command battalions.

Their loyalty is not measured by religion but by shared purpose: the defense of a homeland that protects freedom and human dignity for all. In their unity lies one of Israel’s quiet miracles: that a country so small and so diverse can forge such unity under fire.

In Israel, when something happens — when there’s a threat, a terror attack, a disaster — people don’t ask, “Where’s the police?” They ask, “Where’s the army?” Because the IDF is more than a military; it is the heartbeat of the country. It is there in times of war and peace, in search-and-rescue missions, humanitarian operations, and natural disasters. It is the first responder, the last line of defense, and the constant reminder that the Jewish People will never again be helpless.

And there is something else, something that defines the moral line between Israel and its enemies. When Israelis lose soldiers, we call them heroes. When our enemies lose fighters, they call them martyrs. Do you see the difference? Our heroes die protecting life. Their people die pursuing death. Our soldiers fall shielding civilians; theirs fall hiding behind them. We mourn our dead with tears; they celebrate theirs with parades.

That difference — between a nation that sanctifies life and one that glorifies death — is not a detail. It is the very heart of this conflict. The IDF fights to live. Hamas and its patrons fight so others will die.

Perhaps nowhere was that moral struggle more visible than in one of the most heartbreaking moments of the war: when Israeli soldiers, in the chaos of battle, accidentally killed three Israeli hostages who had escaped captivity in Gaza. It was an unspeakable tragedy, a moment that shook the entire country to its core. These soldiers, already burdened with the impossible weight of combat, suddenly had to carry a pain beyond words.

But what happened next revealed the soul of Israel. One of the hostages’ mothers, instead of expressing anger, went straight to the soldiers. She told them she did not blame them. She praised them for defending the country, for risking their lives to bring others home. In her grief, she gave them grace. In her heartbreak, she reminded all of Israel that the IDF’s fight is not against the innocent, but for the innocent. That moment captured the essence of who we are: a people who mourn our mistakes even as we honor the purity of the intent behind every act of defense.

Many of the soldiers who fell were barely adults, boys and girls who should have been in university lectures, on first dates, or planning trips after the army. Instead, they carried a nation’s safety on their shoulders. They are young in age, but ancient in spirit, heirs to generations who understood that freedom has never been free for the Jewish People.

Behind each of them stand families who carry a burden that words can never ease. They are the quiet heroes who keep living when the world has moved on — lighting candles, visiting graves, keeping the memory of their sons and daughters alive. In their strength, Israel finds its moral compass. They remind us that every soldier’s life was not only lost; it was given.

For soldiers who served in Gaza, the war has been more than a military campaign; it has been a confrontation with the darkest evil. They fought in tunnels and ruins, in cities turned to rubble by the cruelty of those who hide behind civilians and children. They rescued hostages, recovered the bodies of friends, and witnessed horrors that words cannot ain.

Yet, evmid that darkness, they upheld the values that make Israel what it is: striving to protect innocent life, delivering aid even to enemy civilians, and maintaining their humanity when others had abandoned theirs.

The children who watched their fathers and mothers don uniforms these past two years will one day wear their own. They will remember the stories, the courage, the songs sung in the bases, the names whispered at memorials. And when their time comes, they will step forward — not out of hate, but out of love. Because in Israel, to serve is to protect the miracle of life.

During the war, I visited wounded soldiers in the hospital — young men lying in beds with shrapnel wounds, burns, and missing limbs. I expected sadness. What I found instead was a fierce, almost defiant spirit. Every one of them, without exception, said the same thing: “I just want to get back to my unit.” They weren’t thinking about medals or recognition; they were thinking about their brothers and sisters still fighting in Gaza.

Even in pain, even bandaged and broken, they were eager to return to the front lines. There is something indescribable about that kind of courage, the kind born not from glory, but from love. Love of country. Love of comrades. Love of life.

The IDF is not just a defense force; it is a moral force. It stands as a living refutation of the lie that power and ethics cannot coexist. In a region where brutality is often glorified, the IDF has shown that strength can serve compassion, and that the sword of Israel can be wielded with restraint, not vengeance. The soldiers of the IDF did not just defend a country; they defended a principle: that Jews have the right to live freely, safely, and proudly in their own land.

The IDF is the living continuation of a 4,000-year story. The same people who once wandered powerless through the deserts of exile now defend their homeland in uniform, guided by the same ancient faith in life, justice, and hope. Every Israeli soldier is a link in that unbroken chain — from David to today. They stand not only for a country, but for the eternal right of the Jewish People to exist in peace and dignity.

To the soldiers who fought, to the reservists who returned home changed, to the families who bore the weight of absence and fear, to the parents who found the strength to say goodbye again, to the medics, engineers, intelligence officers, and volunteers who made survival possible — Israel owes a debt that cannot be repaid.

The story of the IDF is the story of a people who refuse to give up on life, who turn grief into unity, who fight not for conquest but for existence. And though the cost has been unbearably high, their sacrifice ensures that the light of Israel continues to burn bright.

May the memory of the fallen be a blessing. May the wounded find healing. And may the living carry forward their legacy with pride, strength, and the unshakable conviction that Am Yisrael Chai — the Nation of Israel lives.

Tylenol and Autism: More to the Story By Joan Swirsky

October 11, 2025 American Thinker

In 2020, the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that one in 36 children (approximately four percent of boys and one percent of girls) was estimated to have autism-spectrum disorder, estimates that were significantly higher than those in all previous years.

But just five years later, according to the press conference held just weeks ago on September 22, President Trump — in the presence of U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz — announced that the Department of Health and Human Services stated that autism had surged in America nearly 400% and now affects 1 in 31 American children…

…and that this alarming statistic was a result of pregnant women taking Tylenol during their pregnancies!

Within milliseconds, everyone weighed in, from a skeptical Scientific American to the hearty support of the Icahn School in the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

Here, Dr. Josh Redd explains in plain English why Tylenol is so bad for pregnant women.

Besides the pros and cons, disturbing facts emerged, not the least of which is that the FDA knew about the Tylenol-autism link over a decade and a half ago…but did nothing! Talk about “follow the money”!

In fact, as early as 2019, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study recommended — again, with no follow-through — that the labels be revised to advise pregnant women to “be careful about casual use of acetaminophen when it is not strongly needed for pain or other purposes.”

It took a few years, but since September 2022, according to the BirthInjuryCenter.org , over 100 lawsuits have been filed nationwide against acetaminophen manufacturers, claiming damage over the failure to warn pregnant users that Tylenol and generic versions may increase the risk of having a baby with autism and/or ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Speaking of Failures

By that I mean that this potentially life-altering announcement omitted — actually failed — to include a quite obvious cause of autism’s precipitous rise over the past several decades.

To explain: In the early ’70s, I worked nights — the 11 P.M. to 7 A.M. shift — as a delivery room nurse at a university-affiliated hospital near my home on Long Island. It was a revolutionary time in obstetrics, when the Lamaze method of “prepared childbirth” and the use of sonograms to visualize fetuses were gaining popularity.

Actually, ultrasound technology was first developed in Scotland in the mid-1950s by obstetrician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown to detect industrial flaws in ships. By the end of the ’50s, ultrasound was routinely used in Glasgow hospitals, but it was not until the 1970s that it was used in American hospitals to check that the developing baby, placenta, and amniotic fluid were normal and to detect abnormal conditions such as birth defects and ectopic pregnancies.

At the end of the ’70s, I became a certified Lamaze teacher and spent the next 22 years giving weekly classes to couples in my home. In a very real way, I had my own laboratory, as I learned directly from my clients about the increasing escalation of sonogram exams they had as the decades elapsed.

In the early 1980s, it was common for only one or two out of the ten women in my classes to have a sonogram. In just a few years, every woman in my classes had had a sonogram. And in the late ’80s and ’90s, almost every woman had not one sonogram, but often two or three or four or five — starting as early as three or four weeks’ gestation and extending, in some instances, right up to delivery!

It was in the ’90s, in fact, that it occurred to me that the scary rise in the incidence of autism might be linked to the significant rise in ultrasound exams. Over the years, I’ve posited my theory to a number of people, written letters to the editors of newspapers — including to the N.Y. Times, for which I wrote for over 20 years, but they still refused to publish my letter — and emailed my idea to one of the top news people at the Fox News Network, but the “we report/you decide” powers that be on that TV station strangely decided not to report on this subject.

I contacted autism researchers Dr. Marcel Just and Dr. Diane L. Williams, who told me via email that Dr. Pasko Rakic at Yale was, indeed, exploring the autism-ultrasound link.

Then, in 2006, I found an article in Midwifery Today, “Questions about Prenatal Ultrasound and the Alarming Increase in Autism,” by writer-researcher Caroline Rodgers.

“The steep increase in autism,” Rodgers wrote, “goes beyond the U.S.: It is a “global phenomenon” that “has emerged … across vastly different environments and cultures.”

However, Rodgers added, “what all industrial countries do have in common is … the use of routine prenatal ultrasound on pregnant women. In countries with nationalized health care, where virtually all pregnant women are exposed to ultrasound, the autism rates are even higher than in the U.S., where due to disparities in income and health insurance, some 30 percent of pregnant women do not yet undergo ultrasound scanning.”

Aha! Could this be why blacks and Hispanics in America continue to lag behind whites in the development of autism?

Dolphins, Whales…Relevance?

In the summer of 2012, as many as 3,000 dead dolphins were found in Peru. Researchers at the Organization for the Conservation of Aquatic Animals (ORCA), a Peruvian marine animal conservation organization, attributed the mass deaths to the use of deep-water sonar by ships in nearby waters.

Even earlier, in June of 2008, four days after a Navy helicopter was using controversial sonar equipment during training exercises off the Cornish coast in Great Britain, 26 dolphins died in a mass stranding.

These events — and literally thousands that are similar — are relevant because many mass deaths and strandings of whales and dolphins have been attributed to the sonar waves emitted from Navy ships.

In 2009, an article in Scientific American by John Slocum explained that sonar (sound navigation and ranging) systems, which were first developed by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines, “generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels; the world’s loudest rock bands top out at only 130. These sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles under water and can retain an intensity of 140 decibels as far as 300 miles from their source.”

Slocum wrote that a successful 2003 lawsuit against the Navy brought by the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to restrict the use of low-frequency sonar in waters rich in marine wildlife was upheld by two lower courts, but the Supreme Court “ruled that the Navy should be allowed to continue the use of some mid-frequency sonar testing for the sake of national security.”

Two quick questions: If sonar can kill fully developed dolphins, what effect, then, does it have on the developing brains of in utero embryos and fetuses? And why was the massive use of sonograms during pregnancy not even considered an area of research in our government’s investigation?

And Then There’s the Heat!

Just as concerning, as far back 1982, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s study, “Effects of Ultrasound on Biological Systems,” concluded that “neurological, behavioral, developmental, immunological, hematological changes and reduced fetal weight can result from exposure to ultrasound.” Two years later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported that when birth defects occurred, the acoustic output of sonograms was usually high enough to cause considerable heat.

And yet, in 1993, the FDA approved an eightfold increase in the potential acoustical output of ultrasound equipment! Ostensibly, this increase was to enhance visualization of the heart and small vessels during microsurgery. Clearly, the health and well-being of developing fetuses was not a consideration!

Getting back to those embryos and fetuses, Rodgers explained that “when the transducer from the ultrasound is positioned over the part of the fetus the operator is trying to visualize, the fetus may be feeling vibrations, heat, or both.”

Rodgers then cited a warning the Food and Drug Administration issued way back in 2004: “Even at low levels, [ultrasound] laboratory studies have shown it can have … jarring vibrations” — one study compared the noise to a subway coming into a station — “and a rise in temperature.”

The cause of autism, Rodgers wrote, “has been pinned on everything from ‘emotionally remote’ mothers … to vaccines, genetics, immunological disorders, environmental toxins and maternal infections. A far simpler possibility … is the pervasive use of prenatal ultrasound, which can cause potentially dangerous thermal effects.”

Imagine how these assaults affect the developing brain of a fetus!

Enter Hard Science

In August 2006, Pasko Rakic, M.D., chair of Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Neurobiology, announced the results of a study in which pregnant mice underwent various durations of ultrasound. The brains of the offspring showed damage that was also found in the brains of people with autism.

The research, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, also implicated ultrasound in neurodevelopmental problems in children, such as dyslexia, epilepsy, mental retardation, and schizophrenia, and showed that damage to brain cells increased with longer exposures.

Dr. Rakic’s study, Rodgers said, “is just one of many animal experiments and human studies conducted over the years indicating that prenatal ultrasound can be harmful to babies.”

Follow the Money

In The Daily Beast, Jennifer Margulis, author of Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Baby before Their Bottom Line, wrote that Dr. Rakic “concluded that all nonmedical use of ultrasound on pregnant women should be avoided.”

In her research, Margulis said that she discovered that “there is mounting evidence that overexposure to sound waves — or perhaps exposure to sound waves at a critical time during fetal development — is to blame for the astronomic rise in neurological disorders among America’s children.”

Clearly, there is a vast human tragedy — a true man-made disaster — taking place before our eyes.

For whatever reasons — follow the money? — the mountain of evidence that points to a causal relationship between prenatal ultrasound exams and an escalating pandemic of autism is being systematically ignored.

Could it have anything to do with the huge investments doctors and scientists have made in ultrasound technology, which, according to Jennifer Margulis, “adds more than $1 billion to the cost of caring for pregnant women in America each year”?

Could it have anything to do with the revenue now pouring like an avalanche into the coffers of diagnostic and treatment centers and classrooms?

Could it have anything to do with modern journalism’s almost complete abandonment of hard-nosed reporting and life-saving exposés?

As Caroline Rodgers said, there is an elephant in the room when it comes to the subject of autism, and that elephant is the worldwide blitzkrieg of ultrasound exams on pregnant women, exams that have bombarded the babies they’re carrying with the brain-warping sound waves and heat that will continue to affect them every second of their autistic lives.

Yoo-hoo, President Trump, RFK Jr., and Dr. Oz! It’s way past time to give pregnancy sonograms the same attention and warnings you gave so confidently to Tylenol!

Joan Swirsky is a New York–based journalist and author. Her website is www.joanswirsky.com and she can be reached at joanswirsky@gmail.com.

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